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Why Concord Grapes?

March 28, 2014 by Homestead Lady 8 Comments

Why grow Concord grapes l Easily adaptable table grape l Great for juice and jelly l Homestead Lady.orgDo you love grapes? Do you have a favorite variety? I am no respecter of grapes and basically love eating all kinds out of hand – even heavy handed, seeded ones like Scuppernogs. For making juice, though, it has to be the famous Concord grape. Why Concord grapes? I thought you’d never ask.

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Why Concord Grapes?

First of all, fresh fruits and veggies are a part of any healthy diet. Here’s some nutritional information on Concord grapes from the Concord Grape Association .  Did you know we had such an association? Well, we do.

Basically, though, I love Concord grapes for one reason – they taste divine. Plus, they’re adaptable to different growing conditions so I can grow them myself in my backyard. Oh, that’s two reasons.

Can I Grow Concord Grapes?

If you haven’t planted grapes on your homestead, I urge you to consider doing so! Grapes, unlike fruit trees, will bear in two to three years of being planted. Plus, they don’t require nearly as much vertical space as a fruit tree. Why concord grapes www.homesteadlady.com - First summer pruning lessons

For those who don’t care for the seeds, there are a number of seedless varieties, including Concords.

Their cultural requirements are pretty basic:

  • organic matter in the soil
  • the correct pH (grapes like something between 7.0 and 8.0)
  • water
  • mulch
  • pruning

You can visit this basic link to learn more about how to grow Concords. Like all grapes, Concords do require attention to frost dates and powdery mildew. Here’s a post from Reformation Acres about picking the best mulch for your grapes – click here. Grapes have pretty shallow roots so keeping their area weed-free is important and mulch can help with that.Why concord grapes www.homesteadlady.com - harvesting Concord grapes in the fall

You will also want to trellis your Concord grapes onto something but they aren’t picky about what they grown on. They can even be used to cover an unsightly fence or to create a privacy screen.

Don’t be intimidated by pruning grapes, either – you can totally do it. Pruning is often more art than science so just read up, have confidence and try it. Even my kids get in on pruning because grapes are more simple to prune than some other plants, like fruit trees.

Here’s a link to a video on Youtube.  I’m more of a visual learner so I love YouTube! There are A LOT more and I encourage you to investigate. Why concord grapes www.homesteadlady.com - Pruning grapes is so easy a child can do it - so can you!

Lest you think only the grapes are useful, here’s how to Ferment Grape Leaves to eat them in winter by Joybilee Farm. Yeah, really.

I usually buy my edible plants from Raintree Nursery but you can find grape vines pretty much anywhere. Bottom line, if you can grow a veggie garden, you can grow grapes.

 

Making Concord Grape Juice

You can make good grape juice with any ripe grape and it will taste yummy. However, Concord grapes produce a rich, wholesome flavor that tastes like deep purple. You just look at this stuff and you feel healthy and alive.

To make your own juice, visit this post – its about making plum juice but you follow the same procedure for grape juice.

Concord grapes make delicious homemade grape juice l Healthy snack for kids l Homestead lady.com

Beware the Tartars!

Just a note: grapes naturally contain tartrates. With homemade juice, over time, those tartrates solidify into cool crystalline shapes and sink to the bottom of your jar. They won’t harm you but you can filter them out, if you prefer.

Granny Miller has a neat article about tartrates and how Cream of Tartar is derived from them.

Concords have an especially high volume of tartrates in them so you’ll see the crystals more often with them than with other home canned grape juices. I totally want to save mine now, grind them down and see if they’ll work in my next meringue…

Ways to use Homemade Concord Grape Juice

  1. In our family, we save the amazing Concord grape juice for special occasions, like holidays and birthdays.
  2. We also use our home-canned Concord grape juice to help the kids gag down their herbal antibiotic tincture which tastes beyond nasty. With the juice added, its a lot more palatable.
  3. Here’s how to lacto-ferment your juice to make it even healthier! Never heard of lacto-fermenting? No worries, Learning and Yearning explains it nicely here. While you’re on her site, try this recipe for lacto-fermented gelatin.
  4. Here’s a picture tutorial on making grape jelly from juice, if you’ve never done it before. Here’s a tutorial for jam sweetened with honey from Grow a Good Life. Quick quiz, what’s the difference between jam and jelly? If you said pulp, you were right!
  5. With you’re homemade jelly, you can make these peanut butter and jelly muffins from Attainable Sustainable.

Do you Need to Sweeten Concord Grape Juice?

Most of the time we don’t even bother to dilute or sweeten the Concord grape juice!

It’s not hard to either sweeten or dilute, though, if you decide you want to do so. If you have a quart of Concord grape juice from steam canning (as opposed to simply canning whole grapes, which is a groovy way to go), it will most likely be pretty concentrated.

To Sweeten:

  1. Pour a quart of steam-canned Concord grape juice into a pitcher.
  2. Add 1-2 quarts of clean water and stir.
  3. Warm in a medium sized pot to around 100F/38C.
  4. Add raw sugar or raw honey to taste. Start with 1/4 – 1/2 cup.
  5. Stir until sweetener is dissolved.

In my family, we mix grape juice and homemade lemonade and combine them to form “Gremon.” Or, we add lime juice to make “Grime”. I don’t think we invented that, but it does go as far back as my Great Grandma Shurtleff. Every time I sip it, I think of her.

The Color of Concord Grapes

I kept trying to get a good photo of the Concord grape juice so that you could see how rich and dark purple it is. However, the juice is so dark that the color in the photo just kept turning out black no matter how fancy a shot I got.

So, here’s a picture of the quart jar that the juice was in, full of water to rinse it – see that lovely purple color? Now just imagine that as thick, pungent juice going down your throat. Aaaah, that hits the spot! Why concord grapes www.homesteadlady.com - Concord grape juice color - sort of...

Here’s a little post about using Concord Grapes as a natural dye.

And when you decide to plant grapes, I hope you’ll give Concord’s a try!

Cover graphic gratefully attributed to this Pexels user.

 

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Why grow Concord grapes l Easily adaptable table grape l Great for juice and jelly l Homestead Lady.org

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Filed Under: In the Garden Tagged With: Grow Your Own, Health, Healthy Treat, Homemade, Homestead Question, Kids on the Homestead, Make it Yourself, Medicinal Food, Preserve

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. Karen says

    March 28, 2014 at 9:53 am

    Oh, I sooooo want to have concord grapes growing… Thanks for sharing all of this great information! (p.s. I wouldn’t filter out the tartrates) 🙂

    Reply
  2. Lisa from Iroquois says

    March 29, 2014 at 8:40 am

    There is a sadly neglected grape vine on the edge of the garden that we inherited from my MIL. It has been intimidating me for a couple years now, but I do love grape juice. Maybe this will be the year to tackle it.

    Reply
    • Homestead Lady says

      March 29, 2014 at 8:48 am

      Yes, this is your year!!! Remember, with pruning, if you do something wrong, it will grow back – that’s why God invented next year!

      Reply
  3. janetpesaturo says

    April 2, 2014 at 11:27 am

    Found this through Wildcrafting Wednesday. We have Concord grapes, too, and the juice is the best. We never sweeten is, as our kids like it even unsweetened. So delicious. Sometimes I use it for jelly, but most often we just make juice. Yum.

    Reply
    • Homestead Lady says

      April 2, 2014 at 11:45 pm

      We’ve tried jam a few times and the kids like it but I don’t – it always ends up tasting ferment-y to me and I can’t figure out why!

      Reply
  4. Jen says

    April 3, 2014 at 8:23 am

    Great post!!
    We planted both Concord and Red Table grapes. Our Concord grapes did so well that they killed off the Red Table grape vines, so now we have all Concords. Nothing wrong with that, though. We love them for both juice and jelly!
    Visiting from Tilly’s Nest Blog Hop
    Jen

    Reply
    • Homestead Lady says

      April 3, 2014 at 8:30 am

      Ha! They can be vigorous! So glad you enjoy them, though. Do you have a favorite recipe for jelly? I didn’t care for how ours turned out – it tasted ferement-y. Ideas on what I did wrong?

      Reply
  5. Sandra says

    April 9, 2014 at 7:09 am

    We have some grape vines to plant.
    My dad had them and my mom made jelly and juice. YUM!
    Thanks for sharing your post at the HomeAcre Hop!

    Reply

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