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  • From: "Moyer, Richard" <ramoyer@king.edu>
  • To: "'nafex@lists.ibiblio.org'" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [NAFEX] Mulberry thoughts
  • Date: Sat, 12 Jul 2003 15:31:42 -0400

Am enjoying the mulberry thread; my random comments:
Tiny mulberry bugs: Grew up playing in a mulberry treehouse in my backyard.
We never ate the fruit because those tiny bugs repelled my older sister and
mother. Other neighborhood kids more adventurous. After Food Science and
Microbiology classes, I now know that most/all fresh fruit we eat is
colonized by living organisms; and our digestive systems are quite used to
most of these. Leave the eyeglasses off, and never examine your food
through a microscopic lens if these things make your queasy.

Mulberries to keep birds off the cherries: We have both these trees with
limbs touching and the birds happily go back and forth. There is some
feeding preference for one or the other depending on type of bird. We shake
the fruit onto plastic sheets then funnel into buckets every day or two to
beat at least some of the birds. In our orchard, mulberries do not keep the
cherries bird-free, and it's debatable whether their presence in the
mulberry attracts more birds to the general area. Cherries 100 ft away are
also hard hit unless netted.

Illinois Everbearing (IE) history and fruit quality. Lee Reich in Uncommon
Fruits Worthy of Attention lists IE discovery as 1958, in his 10pp mulberry
chapter. Whether IE or Collier has superior fruit quality may be as much
taste preference as location grown, or some combo thereof. Our IE came from
Classical Fruits in N. Alabama, and we had reds and/or hybrids in Zone 7
Georgia.

Use of IE fruit. Barbara Bullard cooks mulberries and juneberries together.
We bake them with various other berries. Our favorite combo this year has
been IE and redcurrant fruit crisp, hence my daughter has mixed and frozen
these two for winter baking. We also make icecream with IE, as the fruit is
intensely colored. We have a Donvier churn which requires no ice, only
keeping the jacket of the churn in the freezer. We use 1/2-two cups of IE,
gooseberries, blackcaps, etc, alone or mixed for nightly small fruit
dessert. Good way to stretch/share small amounts of intensely
colored/flavored fruits.

Young mulberry leaf/twig consumption. Greg Needham on this list has eaten
these, and they've been recommmended by others though I've not tried them
yet.

Red mulberry rot resistant wood. Incredible, similar in density to black
locust. WOnderful posts, landscape timbers. Dead trunks stand for years and
can be found along with dead standing locust on woodlots, often free for the
asking.

Lastly, a no spray, freeze resistant fruit, early season, reliable and
delicious. Whether early or late freezes, we depend on IE.

Richard Moyer
Zone 6, East Tenn











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