Tips for coppicing and pollarding mulberry trees?

I have about a dozen different kinds of mulberry trees, but mostly I raise alba for silkworm food.  Most advice has us pollarding or coppicing these trees.  So I've tried both.

I've tried the coppicing methods (on non-grafted trees) of below the earth, at ground level, and leaving the ankle-high stump.  I've also pollard a few trees so they are about shoulder height.  I've also tried the different times of year the books recommend for moriculture (growing of mulberry trees) from fall, winter, and early spring.

The books all swear that this will double to quadruple leaf production.

And yet, I get about 1/10th the growth and leaf harvest of the trees I didn't coppice or pollard of the same age.  

Is there some sort of trick to this?  I've never had any problems coppicing other varieties of trees on the farm.  

Is it because we have frost in the winter?  And yet, a lot of traditional silk production locations get a much harder winter than we do.

We have a Mediterranean climate where it rains all winter and doesn't rain at all in the summer.  The mulberries don't seem to need any irrigation but the ones that do the best are near the chicken yard so they get a bit of moisture from rinsing out the chicken water each day.  

If I harvest leaves and branches of the Alba past August I get a lot more dieback over winter than if I don't harvest that late in the summer.  

So is coppicing mulberries just not a thing I can do with my climate or is there some sort of trick I'm missing?  

I have some young mulberries that have been in 9 months. They are planted in my chicken coop and have grown vigorously.

I have a much older mulberry that is planted in an "orchard" area. The older mulberry is very slow growing, and sets very little fruit. I have had some success stimulating more vigorous growth by pruning, but only some.

My one observation that may be relevant is that the slower growing mulberry is surrounded by grass right up to the trunk. I suspect that the grass is simply too vigorous a competitor for the mulberry to thrive. It may do better with eg a comfrey guild shading the root zone. This may also explain what the ones with the chickens do better, as the soil there is bare. I have protected the roots from excessive scratching with a few chunky logs places around them.

A funny thing happened at the grocery store today.  I got talking to this great guy and as soon as we both found out our love of farming, frost and pruning came up.  We were chatting about figs mostly, but I think this would apply for my mulberries too.

I should mention with my pruning, coppicing, and pollarding experiment, I keep all the other variables the same as much as possible so I can get a good idea on what effect the variable I am changing has on the growth of the tree.  These ones are near the chicken run so the ground is kept fairly clear with a weeding once a year of anything growing taller than a chicken can reach to mow.

Anyway, the guy at the grocery store was saying the big problem with farming these days is that trees don't read books (his words, but I'm sure I've said something like that about chickens and sheep somewhere around here).  The books are written for a specific climate and species and set of variables - not necessarily variables we find locally.  Pruning roses and figs when the book says will mean we lose a foot or so of growth because of the kind of winter we get here.  

Instead, wait 'till the last frost has gone and do it then.  

That's an idea as I usually coppice and pollard my willows late in the spring - far later than I should - when the leaves are fully out.  And they do fine (so long as the sheep don't get at them - and often even if the sheep get at them).  So maybe I should wait 'till later in the spring with my mulberries.  I might just give this a try this year and see if I get the desired results.  

My experience with my mulberry which I primarily harvest berries from is not so different from yours raven.

If I leave it alone it will grow better and more berries with less work.

However, I can't leave it alone because it was unintentionally planted far too close to our house. So I have to prune it heavily. Yet it responds quite well to pruning such that I do a full pollard on it now at about head height.

It will put out berries in the spring, but not as many compared to what it would have if I left it alone. The following year though, I believe it might do better than if I hadn't pollarded it at all. So in my case anyway I get like a 0.2 harvest, and a 2 harvest on a pollarded 2 year cycle and I get maybe a 1.5 and 1 harvest on a leave it be 2 year cycle. But I don't have a choice about pruning... Plus if I pollard it I also get really nice long straight poles to use.

This is all just estimates and guesswork on amounts and times. Since I'm counting my harvest calories for the PEP BB now I might actually have better numbers for you in 2 years time!

A very experience gardener/tree surgeon friend of mine insists that mulberries should not be pruned back into old wood anytime they are in leaf, as the wood continues to "bleed". I haven't tested it myself, but I have done light pruning of one year old wood at various times of year with no ill-effect.

I think, as you say, that there is a lot of inherited wisdom that amounts to little more than "I did that once or twice and it worked" - but probably under totally different conditions.

Michael Cox wrote:A very experience gardener/tree surgeon friend of mine insists that mulberries should not be pruned back into old wood anytime they are in leaf, as the wood continues to "bleed". I haven't tested it myself, but I have done light pruning of one year old wood at various times of year with no ill-effect.

I think, as you say, that there is a lot of inherited wisdom that amounts to little more than "I did that once or twice and it worked" - but probably under totally different conditions.

I wonder...

When we harvest for sericulture we are trimming back the branches much harder than one usually does for pruning, sometimes taking up to 90-95% of the visible part of the tree.  The ones that I harvest most heavily during the summer - aka, when they are in leaf - grow the most the following year.  The trees are about 10 years on our farm (some were a few months old others 2 years old when we planted them) and I've been harvesting them since the second year either for silkworm or sheep fodder.  

They usually stop leaking in about 10 min.  Not like a maple that can weep for months.  

I think this is another example of the trees not reading the books.  

The master gardeners in our area used to say never cut anything in leaf, then about 4 years ago, they switched and became very loud advocates of pruning fruit trees and berry bushes when in leaf.  

r ranson wrote:I have about a dozen different kinds of mulberry trees, but mostly I raise alba for silkworm food.  Most advice has us pollarding or coppicing these trees.  So I've tried both.

I've tried the coppicing methods (on non-grafted trees) of below the earth, at ground level, and leaving the ankle-high stump.  I've also pollard a few trees so they are about shoulder height.  I've also tried the different times of year the books recommend for moriculture (growing of mulberry trees) from fall, winter, and early spring.

The books all swear that this will double to quadruple leaf production.

And yet, I get about 1/10th the growth and leaf harvest of the trees I didn't coppice or pollard of the same age.  

Is there some sort of trick to this?  I've never had any problems coppicing other varieties of trees on the farm.  

Is it because we have frost in the winter?  And yet, a lot of traditional silk production locations get a much harder winter than we do.

We have a Mediterranean climate where it rains all winter and doesn't rain at all in the summer.  The mulberries don't seem to need any irrigation but the ones that do the best are near the chicken yard so they get a bit of moisture from rinsing out the chicken water each day.  

If I harvest leaves and branches of the Alba past August I get a lot more dieback over winter than if I don't harvest that late in the summer.  

So is coppicing mulberries just not a thing I can do with my climate or is there some sort of trick I'm missing?  

Here’s our excellent experience with white mulberry and pollarding:

We live in a Mediterranean climate as well. (15” rain/year).
We have a white mulberry grown only for leaves for our sheep. No berries. It’s about 1 ft in trunk diameter. 20 ft high tree midsummer.
We planted it in the driveway (near the sheep barn) so it was surrounded by pavement and thereby does not lose moisture and we never, ever water it. It stays lush and leafy all dry season long.
We pick non-woody branches from the ends for the sheep all season, and they grow back instantly. We only pollard to the multiple main branches of the 6ft tall trunk AT THE END of the DRY season, just before dormancy, but before the leaves go yellow. This way we get kindling for our rocket mass heater, plus great big leaves for the sheep.
It bursts back leafier than ever the following year. Every year.

Recently however, we’ve decided only to pollard every other year because I noticed some fungus growing at the upper pollard sites. I thought perhaps the tree was getting stressed.
It’s fine now and we just pollard in the in between years higher up along the new branches, not at the main branches. And only do the real pollarding every other year or so.  That way we still get the greens for the sheep but don’t debilitate the tree so frequently.

The nice thing about mulberry too, is that the DRY leaves and stems taste terrific to the sheep as well, in contrast to many other tree leaf species (like Sycamore or maple which the sheep will ONLY eat fresh). So you could dry them and feed in winter as well.

We have a second black mulberry (Morris nigra) which does not grow half as fast, and is too small IMO to do any kind of pollarding. We do pick the lush leaves off though at the end of the year before they turn yellow. So this is additional feed, but not as proliferative as the White mulberry in my opinion.
I don’t find mulberry cares much about grass and weeds around it, but gophers can really do a number on them, so it’s important to use tree baskets when planting.

Hope these experiences can help. 🙏

This was pruned back in Mid-october, and it's early December now, so about 50 days after heavy pruning or pollarding it is producing new growth.



I've used the poles to make garden structures and still have a big pile of them that need to be used. Surprisingly they're still green and bendy. I weaved a wreath today with them. It was my second time and it went much better than the first. Supported with some jute string.