Growing Mulberries Naturally

Dan Allen wrote:I collected mulberry cuttings from across the us on my way home from Florida.

Amazing the different characteristics from state to state and tree to tree. I grafted them all on to a seedling tree here at my farm in Michigan to see what takes. I have cuttings from a tree at a rest stop in Kentucky that had long mulberries like a Pakistan variety, but it was growing wild along a fence.

Scott Foster wrote:I planted exclusively Morus Alba.   Two years ago I planted two tiny bare-root cuttings that got hammered the first winter and died back to the ground.  I cut them back to the ground and they exploded that spring.  About a week ago I checked the wood and they didn't have much die-back.  The two are over 6 ft tall, no fruit though.

Last fall I planted 10 Morus Alba... These were tiny bare-root trees.

If you haven't planted bush cherries yet you should check them out.  I planted 4 plants of different varieties, they are on their own roots and are flowering prolifically a good way to get some diversity and they are supposed to be a very reliable way of getting fruit.

Jamin Grey wrote:I have an old one 25 ft tall that has been on the property since before I moved here. Not sure of the species, but it tastes fantastic, and my chickens love it.

Because it's old (and huge part of it fell off in a storm two years ago!), I've started clones of it this spring, and have also dug up a mulberry tree that sprouted from a bird dropping it in a garden bed. I intend to plant a small grove of the mulberries around my chicken coop, to provide summer shade and tasty treats for the chickens.

Steve Thorn wrote:
I've heard mulberries are a great chicken treat!

Annie Daellenbach wrote:The wood is (reportedly) good for carving.

Jamin Grey wrote:

Steve Thorn wrote:
I've heard mulberries are a great chicken treat!

They go crazy for it! My freerange layer birds have their poop turns purple for about a month every year.

Mulberry trees are such heavy producers, the single tree nearly covers the ground in berries for several weeks straight

One of the funnest things I've done is start and raise a batch of meat chickens in their brooder, directly under the tree during mulberry season. Straight out of the mailing crate, the chickens were gobbling up mulberries they could barely even fit in their beak. Probably the healthiest batch of birds I've done; unfortunately, I now do my meat birds much earlier (or much later) in the year to avoid the summer heat stress on them, so the meat birds always miss mulberry season.

Annie Daellenbach wrote:My trees will root from hardwood cuttings. ... The berries are smallish (not a long-form, like the Pakistan Mulberry), and taste exactly like blackberries.  They are so good, my kids wait impatiently while I reach up and grab a top branch to bend down and we pluck all the berries they can grab.  The branches are long and flexible, but the tree is young, maybe 5 years old.  We get berries in three main crops, when they start to come on we will be daily visiting the trees for about 2 weeks, although we have had them dry and drop off during a dry spell.  The chickens hop to get the low hanging fruit.  These trees are some of my favorite, they are aggressively healthy and planted on the mound below our swale.

The wood is (reportedly) good for carving.

Did you know - 'Mulberry is usually associated with sericulture, the domestication of mulberry started several thousands of years ago as a requirement for silkworm rearing.'
Mulberry and its potential for animal feeding: http://www.fao.org/3/x9895E/x9895e00.htm#Contents

Mulberry and your health: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5981255/

I'll take some photos when the berries are ripe!

J Davis wrote:I bought my trees from dept of ag, their description says "red". I kid you not.

But I have at least two varieties based on leaves and timing differences and the price was right. These are two year old specimens.

The trees adjacent to wood chip piles are less sweet. The ones dry grown are sweeter.

J Davis wrote:I bought my trees from dept of ag, their description says "red". I kid you not.

But I have at least two varieties based on leaves and timing differences and the price was right. These are two year old specimens.

The trees adjacent to wood chip piles are less sweet. The ones dry grown are sweeter.

Dan Allen wrote:Here is the kentucky rest stop mulberry grafted onto a white mulberry seedling, probably the smallest graft I've done.

Morfydd St. Clair wrote:While you guys are talking mulberries:  I picked up a weeping mulberry last year and put it in a corner.  It's about 5 feet tall at the peak of the arches.  Will it grow as huge as a normal one?  This would be bad as in its current location it would cause impolite shade to my neighbors.  If I need to move it, is that even feasible at this point?  Thanks!

Dan Allen wrote:Here is the kentucky rest stop mulberry grafted onto a white mulberry seedling, probably the smallest graft I've done.[/quote

Sad to report that the graft portion froze off on the 3rd when we had a 4 hour late freeze. I do have rooted cuttings as a backup in my nursery. However, the Kentucky mulberry turned out to be a male. I think I will grow it out anyway if the cuttings survive.

Steve Thorn wrote:This mulberry has grown from 1 foot tall to 7 feet tall just this year, and it's still got two months left in the growing season!

Diane Kistner wrote:I've got three potted, thriving native mulberry cuttings (Morus rubra, I'm pretty sure) that I'm really excited about planting out this fall. Seeing this growth rate thrills me. The person I got these cuttings from said to wait until November to put them in the ground (I'm in Athens, zone 8a), but I can hardly wait. What my friend did with cuttings like these is pollard them at about 6' when they were well established; the crown then spreads out all around in a circle, and we just stood under hers and picked yummy mulberries.

How do the deer take to young mulberry trees? Any tips other than a deer fence?

Steve Thorn wrote:I planted mine around November last year, and they really started exploding with growth in the middle of summer this year [...]

I've heard deer really like mulberry leaves, but thankfully they haven't tasted mine yet.

Diane Kistner wrote:I'm also trying to figure out precisely how deer are moving through our neighborhood to try to plant things in a way that will encourage them to have a nibble, then move on to somebody else's yard!

Steve Thorn wrote:I've noticed that if I'm able to protect the plants closest to the woods where the highest deer pressure is, so far they seem to just keep moving and not venture further to my other plants.

Maybe they'll eventually just bypass us altogether.

Diane Kistner wrote:I'm trying to think of something quick and decorative I can weave through/put on the fence viewable from the street to deter deer that the neighbors would not think looks "junky."

Steve Thorn wrote:I've thought about using mulberries as a perimeter living fence. They grow fast, deer like to munch their leaves, and they can make a ton of fruit to fill up critters' bellies and possibly keep them off the other fruit.

Combined with some thorny bushes on the inner side, I bet this could be an effective combination, will have to try it out!

Diane Kistner wrote:What kind of thorny bushes would you recommend as mulberry companions?

I may try that on my fence in question. Only problem is, it's partial shade with some pines nearby. Do you have mulberries doing well in partial shade?

I've been knocked out at how quickly the few extra sticks of mulberry I got from my friend leafed out when I stuck them into a pot. And now that I've got my little screen-house cuttings setup, the deer have not been bothering themI could get a ton of them going....