To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] white mulberries and hardiness
Date: Fri, 4 Jan 2008 22:08:22 -0600
Here in TN The Big Easter Freeze hurt white and hybrid mulberries much
worse than pure rubras. This is not the first time I have seen white
mulberries hurt by spring freezes here in z6-7. My IE, which had hardly
grown in the 5 years I'd had it anyway, died to the ground and the alba
rootstock later put out a shoot. I'm not too eager to graft onto that
shoot. I'm wondering, did the IE die from the cold, or was it the
rootstock? Some little seedling albas that had languished for years a foot
away from the fence of the chicken pen, merely suffered a lot of damage.
Rubras, which come up here and there and make actual trees on our red clay,
were barely hurt.
I never really thought about why the albas wouldn't grow for me. Are
they freezing to the ground every winter in our fluctuating temps, or is
something else wrong? Two of them beside the chicken pen have now made it
to 4 ft high, took them about 6-7 years from seed. The rubras on the other
side of the pen 15 ft away have grown just fine, though I suppose they were
bigger to start with. Some things just seem very strange. Donna