Hi, I'm a home gardener with five production size muscadine vines. My vines are youngish so I'm still experimenting with things. There are a number of desert recipes for them online. I make muscadine jam with them and then use the jam in savory recipes. I have also downloaded some Asian plum souse recipes and made "muscadine sauce" with them. When processing muscadines there are a few tricks that you might find useful for ext time. If it's a traditional slip skin variety, start by separating the skins from the pulp. Just squeeze the pulp into a bowl and put the skin into a separate container. The best tasting juice is in the skins. That's also where the vitimine and nutrients are. The skin of some varieties are astringent and add a lot of tartness, so some sugar may need to be added. When I make jams I grind up the skins in a blinder and add it to the jam. It makes the jam. There are several muscadine pie recipes out there that mainly use the skins. When extracting juice out of the pulp or skin, think "pasteurizing" you heat them quickly and lightly and then extract the juice. Some will accomplish this using steam rather than through boiling. A little heat does a lot. Some of the newer muscadine varieties are bread to have firm flesh and brittle crunchy skin. The varieties with this characteristic that I know about are Supreme, Lane, Late Fry, Big Red, Darlene, Black Beauty, and Majesty. (Majesty is a new variety which is not available to the public yet, but this one is one is supposed to be an inch in a half in diameter). These types you can pick while slightly green, cut in half and scoop the seeds out and process like plums. Something I plan to try is to simply can them and make whole sweet pickles with them. However, these varieties when picked slightly green (color turned but not soft), are quite crunchy and sweet tart. so I think they will make a very nice sweet relish. But truth be told, the big female varieties such as Supreme and Black Beauty are so good I end up standing next to the vines and eating most of the berries right there. Supreme is so sweet that the berries are good to eat long before it fully ripens. So even though it might produce 50 lbs of fruit, I doubt that fruit will go to waste. But the females are just that, female. You need a self fertile variety to go with it for pollination. Supreme which is the largest and the sweetest of the muscadines has some special care needs that the others don't have. The best source of informatiI on on care is the Ison Nursery web-page and You Tube channels. They grow more muscadines than anyone else in the world and give lots of helpful hints. The commercial muscadines all bloom at the same time. You can extend your harvest by a lot by planting a mixture of early, mid season and late season varieties. Also Late Fry and a few others are long season varieties. It starts ripening berries late (September) and will ripen berries until the end of October. Last year, mine has just a smattering of berries to ripen just before Thanksgiving. God bless.

[hydro_fan22] Think you really picked the wrong thread for the question since hes touting LED's here. "difference between t8 and t8 high output" I'm taking it you meant to say t8 vs t5HO. Since I don't think there is much difference between the t8's. T5HO is more efficient @ about around 10% from what Ive heard. T5HO is more expensive at around 8-12$+ per bulb(HO) compared to T8's 3-6$ (pricing is based off 48" and rated @ 6500k, but it depends on the vender/manufacturer). T8: 48" - 6500k - 2700 Lumens (32w) (CRI-78) T5HO(high output): 48" - 6500k - 5000 lumens (54w) (CRI-85) T5VHO(very high output): 48" - 6500k - 7200 Lumens (95w) (CRI-85) T8: 84 lumens per watt - Price range: $3-6 (depending on the vender/manufacturer) T5HO: 92 lumens per watt - Price range: $8-12 (depending on the vender/manufacturer) T5VHO: 74 lumens per watt - Price range: $8-15 (depending on the vender/manufacturer) You just have to factor in your wattage/price ratio. Some people say it's best to replace the bulb before it goes out on it's own since overtime they lose their(less efficient?not sure the word) stamina. Just look @ the expectancy of the t8/t5HO/t5VHO bulb(s) and "maybe" base that into your purchasing decisions(those 20k-30k+ hours are probably based off some circumstances like temps/cooling(air flow)/etc and "might" not a suitable way to base a purchase off of, but I just threw that in there). Seems like a contradiction I just made, but you would have to do research on that. "can I just get a cheaper fixture with my own reflector to grow the spinach" Yep. Just make sure that they have a terms of purchase/return policy/some type of warranty, that seems suitable for you. This is the same for bulbs as well. The more fixtures/ballasts/bulbs you own, the more problems that could arise with them going out unexpectedly = more purchases/shipping(depending on where you buy them). I would make sure to have a small surplus just incase(bulbs). For ballasts, you just have to wing it and hope you purchase from a good batch or that later on down the road they don't go out. Maybe talk to it(ballast), take it out to a drive in movie, or sing it a song or two just to keep it happy :) . If all you wanted to grow was spinach, hell any leafy green. I would just go with t8's. More places carry their fixtures/ballast/bulbs locally from what I know(home depot/lowes/etc). Their prices are not that expensive either. The cost per fixture of the t5's are up there(high), but you're getting more for your money. The real question is, how much do lumens/cri affect a grow and at what rate do they increase it at(if any). Also have to factor in lumens per sqFT. There are charts out there that base sqFT of growing off of watts(haven't seen any about lumens). For example: (based off of watts :\ ) (if watts per lumens were average then it would I guess be more legit) 4' T5 (4 bulbs) - 216watts - 2.5' x 5' 4' T5 (8 bulbs) - 432watts - 4' x 6' If you do some more research and come across any videos of people comparing multiple t8 grows versus t5 grows using the same conditions/solutions then I would love to see that(as long as their not peddling a product behind their "research"). I plan on using t8's and the grows that I have seen from t8's resulted in great results, but it's the same for t5's. [mikegip] Sorry we jacked your thread, but it didn't seem like it was going anywhere to begin with. [mikegip / homehydro] Carry on.

I'm not sure what you mean about heat sensitive--do you mean, do they not do well in heat? With regard to heat tolerant varieties, here are a few: Sioux Super Sioux Mexico Stupice Manalucie Costoluto Genovese Hawaiian Tropic Hybrid Heartland Hybrid Also there are several heat-set varieties, almost all of which are determinite types: Sunmaster Hybrid Solar Set Hybrid Heat Wave Hybrid Homestead Hybrid and others Not all of these get rave reviews in the taste department. Most cherry types also do well in hot weather. It's the plants that produce the larger fruit that often aren't the most heat tolerant. Hope this helps.

Red Alert, is normally classed as a cold tolerant variety and was developed in England over twenty years ago, it normally comes into flower and sets it's fruit about the end of may outside, and all of the tomatoes come ripe at once on the plant so you can pick the whole set of plants at one go, rather more of a commercial variety for machine harvesting, It was originally an F1 hybrid, but lost favor over the years because it was a bit on the tart side and not sweet enough, but it was certainly one of the earliest to fruit in the garden. I have grown it several times in the past twenty years or more, and have not noticed any problems with heat tollerence, but the ants nests under the ground will certainly make the plants wilt, as I have have several do that in the past, even inside a greenhouse, when I pulled up the plant it was teaming with darned ants all in the root ball hole,