Hi! Here in central texas, mulberries can be found native and naturalized, the red/white varieties. There is one in Boerne that is HUGE, like oak tree huge, full of berries, it is amazing. But, I digress. I bought a red mulberry (not sure if it was standard red or the Texas red variety). It will come up as volunteers all over the place, which I've been able to dig up and plant elsewhere, grow in pots to sell/give away, etc. I am an herbalist, it's uses are that the whole plant can be used, root to leaf for a variety of reasons, also the bark can be used I believe as an anti-parasitic. I use the leaves like blackberry leaves.
This year I was successful at pruning at the right time (February here), and it produced more fruit, smaller and lower branches made it much easier to harvest. Here, it usually fruits twice, sometimes thrice a year.
Some fun anecdotes--it's hard to kill once established in the right place! The oldest one did die back 4 years ago with an extremely low temp freeze for this area, and it grew back.
I planted a volunteer opposite my oldest red, and it turned into a white variety. I'm not sure how this is happening, but I have several volunteers I've cultivated all over my yard, and it seems that I have two whites and several reds. Could this be coincidence with birds bringing white seeds into my yard? I have no idea.
The other fun discovery is that when I pruned back in Feb. I used the cuttings to make an arch for a rose vine. It was poorly connected at the arch so that part came down in a thunderstorm with freak high winds, but I noticed at the base the mulberry is leafing out. So much fun!
I have also made brown paper from old mulberry bark that I had lying around, and look forward to trying green bark next pruning. From what I've heard from a tree guy here---the paper mulberry fruit wasn't his fave and he's bummed he got the wrong variety!
As you can tell, I'm a huge fan of Mulberry, and other self-seeding fruits!!
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