To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] Germinating mulberry seed
Date: Tue, 01 Jul 2008 10:09:42 -0500
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