I have had great success so far with all the varieties I have tried to root except one. I bought several varieties for a fence/trellis (I am actually kind of proud of it, it's a living fence) and just couldn't leave the excess that I had to prune off on arrival. I put them in pots. My mother-in-law saw a couple pots with "just a stick" in them and planted basil in one and lemongrass in another. Luckily, the one with the basil sent out a shoot through one of the pot drainage holes and the other one grew fine out of the lemongrass. I just used rootone and shoved them into the pots.

I did not have so much luck however, with the cuttings I got from a local vine that was purported to be 400 or more years old from one of the original failed colonies. I think the age of it had something to do with it, or just that I am a novice and took the cuttings when I happened to be in the area rather than when would be a good time to get it.

So, I would say that since my successes were from plants that were shipped to me (and therefore dormant) and not from the ones I cut in June or September, I would say that my experience is that dormant cuttings were more successful.

I have the Triumph cultivar. It grew rapidly and produced in its first year. It had a great juice but the skin was really peppery.

Let me research the rules for sending plant material abroad and see if it's something that can be done. I would like to help people out, but I don't want to violate any laws.

I have muscadines on my property. They're really easy to grow for me here, I am in zone 8b, which means that we rarely freeze and temperatures are often in the 90s Fahrenheit in the summer. Whats different here than in the UAE is that we're likely to have it a lot more humid.

But, I live on the coast, so I have very sandy soil, so that seems similar. The only difference is that you're possibly hotter and less humid. The heat is something that the muscadines like, but the lack of humidity may be the only source of problems for you.

I think that if you can grow figs, you can grow muscadines. I don't know how it works, but if customs would allow it, I am about to go and prune mine. I have several varieties and one of them is hybridized with a bunch grape.

No, sorry, they are not self-fertile. You need two varieties. This gets confusing because they sucker readily, so you could have dozens of clones, but since they're clones, they are not going to pollinate each other. The good news is that the elderberries are cheap and so you could get another one pretty inexpensively. I have a John and an Adams variety.

Where did you get it from? I have been searching for an inexpensive version of this tree, but I can't remember seeing any available.

I was looking at doing something similar, with a cold frame. Maybe some passive solar work would help increase the water temperature a little.

I live in a warm spot, so in the winter, I think a modified version of this might help:
http://www.thesietch.org/projects/solarthermalpanel2/