Skip to Content.
Sympa Menu

nafex - Re: [NAFEX] mulberries

nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Subject: North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

List archive

Chronological Thread  
  • From: "William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [NAFEX] mulberries
  • Date: Sat, 30 May 2009 08:27:20 -0500


They are impossible for me to keep in a small space but you can keep them in-bounds by pruning them to a weep and summer pruning them once a season- removing all vigorous upright growth. They make beautiful trees managed this way and you keep a lot of fruit in ladderless reach.


I've been trying to do that with the Illinois Everbearing Mulberry I still have (half) alive.

But I have another problem with this variety. Since it doesn't bear fruit all at once, but just a little bit all summer, the birds clean them out before they ever get completely ripe. I didn't think of that when I planted this tree. With a normal mulberry - or, at least, the wild ones around here - the berries all come ripe at once, so there are always plenty to eat, even after the birds take their share.

Yeah, I could net the tree, like I have to do with my grapevines, but that's a pain, especially if I had to leave the net up all summer. And the tree grows so vigorously that I'd have to cut the net off at the end of the season. (Not to mention that it's hard to pick berries when the tree is netted.) Yeah, the Illinois Everbearing Mulberry was a definite mistake here, for several reasons.

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

--
In Paris they simply stared when I spoke to them in French; I never did succeed in making those idiots understand their language. - Mark Twain




Archive powered by MHonArc 2.6.24.

Top of Page