Finally tasted some Illinois Everbearing mulberries the other day & they were
really lovely.
For what it's worth, I just cut mine down. I had a couple of minor
problems with it (these might not be a problem for you), and one major
one. The minor problems were (1) some regular winterkill and (2) it
wanted to grow like crazy, while I wanted to keep it in a compact spot.
But the reason I cut it down is because I never once got a ripe mulberry
from it. Ordinary mulberries produce a lot of berries all at once, so
the birds can eat a bunch and still leave plenty for me. But this one
produces a few all summer long, so the birds got *all* of them before
they ever got completely ripe.
And the tree is so vigorous that it would have been almost impossible to
net (and it would be hard to keep netting on a tree all summer, anyway).
I finally decided that it just didn't make sense to keep it.
As an aside, I'd like to try a dwarf mulberry there. But the only one
I've ever heard of is the Geraldi Dwarf Mulberry from Edible Landscaping
(in Virginia), and I've had trouble with that nursery and that
particular variety. Does anyone here know of a dwarf mulberry available
elsewhere? And what in the heck dwarfs the Geraldi, anyway? It's
grafted, but the rootstock seems very vigorous (judging by the results
when the top of my last one died).
Bill
Lincoln, NE (zone 5)
--
We can only wonder what a Manhattan Project aimed at alternative energy
might have accomplished by now, had it been started 15 years ago. What
we have had in lieu of vision, leadership, and backbone is a series of
easy paths taken. - Jeremy Grantham