If you want your muscadines to grow more grapes and less tangled vines this summer, this winter is an important time for you, says a University of Georgia expert.

"Muscadines grow so vigorously every season the vines can get very congested if they go unpruned," said Gerard Krewer, an Extension Service horticulturist with the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences.

Late January and February, Krewer said, are prime time for muscadine pruning.

"You can prune muscadines anytime they're dormant," he said. "But in late winter the vines are less likely to be cold-damaged after you prune."

Muscadines, Krewer said, produce most of their flower- bearing shoots from the lower part of the previous year's growth.

So the lower section -- the first two to four buds -- of that part of the vine that grew during 1998 will wind up growing the shoots and blooms and, ultimately, the grapes of '99.

That's how you prune your muscadines. The part of the vine that grew after those first two to four buds of '98 is unneeded growth. Cut that off.

Start at the tip of each shoot, Krewer said, and follow it back to the first raised bump on the stem, the "collar" that marks where last year's growth began. That should be anywhere from six inches to five feet from the tip.

When you come to the "collar" where the '98 growth begins, back up to the second to fourth bud and make your pruning cut. The vines may "bleed," or ooze sap, Krewer said. But that won't harm the plants.

Pruning will keep your vines from getting unmanageably tangled over the years. Perhaps more important, it will also assure you of more reliable crops of grapes.

"If you let muscadines go unpruned," Krewer said, "they tend to produce too heavily, which leads into alternate bearing. That becomes a feast-or-famine kind of production."

If you've let your muscadines go unpruned long enough that they're a tangled mess already, consider cutting them back to the original cane running down the wire.

If you do that, though, you won't have grapes this year, since this year's grapes will grow only on shoots that emerge from 1998 buds.

"Unless you're willing to almost forgo a crop next year," Krewer said, "I would suggest pruning one side back to the original cane and the other side back to the bottom two to four buds of 1998 growth.

"Then the following winter you can do the reverse," he said. "Severely prune the other side. In that way you'll have grapes each year and still be able to clean up your vines by next winter."

On overgrown arbors, where you have seven or eight major canes, "you might want to take out one or two large canes each year," he said, "That way you can completely renovate the arbor in a few years.

"Each year, be sure to cut the previous season's growth back to two to four buds," he said. "That will keep the arbor from becoming overgrown again."