North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[william Eggers <wce1482@yahoo.com>]

It seems odd to me to hear of anyone actually planting mulberry trees.  Here they are a weed and come up everywhere.  If you want some, come and dig them up

 

Bill Eggers

Winterset, Iowa

"William C. Garthright" <billg@inebraska.com> wrote:

> > 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
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