North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com>]

> This isn't an answer to your question, but I'm curious. Where did you get 
> your mulberry from and how large was it when you planted it? Mine never came 
> out of dormancy so I want to buy a new one this spring.
>   


I've had some trouble with that, myself. Last year, I bought an Illinois 
Everbearing Mulberry from Forestfarm (http://www.forestfarm.com/), but 
it never broke dormancy (just started sprouting up from the white 
mulberry roots). They shipped me a replacement right away, which I 
planted on June 9. That's very late here, since we start getting hot 
weather soon after that, but the tree grew very well. However, it still 
had green leaves at our first fall frost. I don't know if that's why, 
but it never broke dormancy this spring. We did have that hard April 
freeze, after a very warm March, but I thought this tree would be OK, 
since it hadn't started leafing out yet. Well, at any rate, this one is 
dead. (I'm not going to ask for ANOTHER replacement. I'm going to try a 
Geraldi Dwarf Mulberry - at 
http://www.ediblelandscaping.com/Plants/Mulberries.htm - there, instead.)

I bought another Illinois Everbearing (to plant in a different location) 
this spring from Whitman Farms (http://www.whitmanfarms.com/). That's 
the one I split. From both nurseries, these have been potted trees, and 
they've been little more than thin twigs, especially compared to the 
huge, bare-rooted fruit trees I've become used to planting. (I couldn't 
find any bare-rooted mulberries.)  But they've grown really fast. This 
one, in particular, is just astounding. In a few short months, it's 
become the tallest fruit tree I've got (admittedly, the others are 
dwarfs and semi-dwarfs, with the oldest only about three years old). I 
was hoping to use summer pruning to keep it reasonably small, but that's 
not looking likely. (I think I'll write a separate posting about that.) 
Both trees looked more like vines when I bought them, since the stem was 
so thin that they wouldn't even stand upright on their own. I just can't 
believe how thick the trunk has become in such a short time! I guess 
this is what 'vigorous' means, huh?

So far, I haven't had a mulberry break dormancy, so we'll see what 
happens with this tree next spring (provided I haven't killed it 
already). Wild mulberries grow like weeds around here - in fact, it can 
be difficult to kill them on purpose - but the fruit is really variable. 
I figured that planting a mulberry would be a slam dunk. So far, that 
hasn't been the case.

Good luck,

Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)

--
What happens if a big asteroid hits Earth? Judging from realistic 
simulations involving a sledge hammer and a common laboratory frog, we 
can assume it will be pretty bad. - Dave Barry