North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

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

At 09:14 AM 7/1/2008, Jerry wrote:

Several years ago I simply placed berries in the ground, as I recall maybe 1/2 inch deep and waited. I had to trim, off the extras. Sad to say, none when fruited were as good as I remembered the tree from which the berries came from.  They were smaller also. One is now grafted to Illinois Ever Bearing. The other to a tree I found bearing reasonably good fruit in Jackson, MI. IEB is even much better than those from which seed was collected. The MI graft here isn't as good as I remembered the ortet was in MI.

Just as Malus, there is great genetic diversity in Morus seedlings, graft, graft, graft. 

Thanks Jerry.
I had thoughts of letting some grow to maturity, but most I probably will graft back to the ortet & IEB.  Donna Hudson and I have had a running discourse on the possibility that M.alba may not work really well in some localities as a rootstock for better varieties, and though both of my IEB trees are on seedling M.alba rootstock, every other variety I had grafted was killed back to ground level in last years' Easter freeze.  I'm thinking the native M.rubra, particularly those from the local KY selection, may be a bit more hardy than the M.alba seedlings I've been accumulating here and there from flowerbeds, fencerows, etc.

On the differing performance in different areas - Gordon Nofs had an M.albaXrubra that he'd purchased as "Pakistan", but it wasn't; it was his top performer in his Flint, MI orchard - better than IEB for him.  I grafted it and it fruited several years in a row. For me, it was just so-so; not nearly as good as IEB, and less productive as well as smaller fruits than even my M.rubra selections.

Lucky Pittman
USDA Cold Zone 6
AHS Heat Zone 7
Hopkinsville, KY