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nafex - [NAFEX] pruning mulberries

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  • From: Alan Haigh <alandhaigh@gmail.com>
  • To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [NAFEX] pruning mulberries
  • Date: Wed, 14 Apr 2010 20:03:38 -0400

Mulberries bear fruit on same year wood, amazingly enough, being an early bearing fruit.  I was the one who suggested reducing the size of mulberries and keeping a lot of the crop low by training them to a weep.  Makes a real pretty tree too.  To keep them smallish you have to prune them at least once during the summer.  You remove all the most vigorous upright water sprout type growth and leave the lowest growing piece at the end of branches you keep.  These pieces will tend to weep- at least eventually.  The tree will also produce some downward growth which you must favor.

Someone else wrote about pruning them with repeated stub cuts and forcing them to grow lots of small fruiting wood.  This was about pruning them several times during the summer and the man said he could keep the trees quite small. 

The idea that birds are reluctant to harvest the lower fruit to avoid predators seemed interesting, although they don't seem to worry much about their low elevation when they come to harvest blueberries.



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