North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>]

At 02:46 PM 7/9/2003 -0700, Rob wrote:
> Are you going to the SFF meeting in a few weekes? I
> would like to meet up with you and discuss in detail
> what you are doing with your mulberries. One of these
> days, I hope I will get over there to see them.

Sadly, I won't be in attendance.

Like many of the fruits here, I first planted mulberries at my wife's 
behest.  She'd grown up climbing a big mulberry in the yard across the 
street from her childhood home, eating berries 'til she was stuffed.  She 
wanted our kids to have the same sort of experience.
I'd had no real experience with them, other than a big productive seedling 
tree in the yard of the farmhouse we lived in while I was in grad school at 
U. of MO, but as was the case with the pecans, hickories, and persimmons, I 
quickly became quite impressed with 'em, or at least with Illinois Everbearing
The seedling trees - one was purchased as M.rubra, but it's M.alba - 
produce heavy crops of small, tart berries, and they ripen about the same 
time as the strawberries and cherries, serving as a 'diversion' crop for 
the birds, lessening depredation on the cherries & strawberries.  The 
Illinois trees are better climbing candidates, as they don't produce the 
profusion of small, scratchy twigs present on the M.albas, and my 9-yr old 
goes out at least twice a day for a session of climbing and grazing in the 
mulberry trees.  Early on, this season, birds were getting more of the 
Illinois fruits than we were, but now they seem to have moved on to other 
targets(like the blueberries), leaving most of the ripening mulberries for us.
At present, we just pick and eat, but I suspect as the trees continue to 
grow larger and produce more fruit, we might start using them for 
cooking.  I have made mulberry cobbler, and it's very good.

I've had a chance to sample a few 'wild' white-fruited M.alba trees, and 
they're just not to my liking - some sweetness, but flavor is lacking - 
taste like grass to me.

Lucky