Does a Kokuso mulberry need to be grafted? or can it be rooted and planted in 5B?
Grafting it should work fine but wait until the rootstock is pushing growth. Never tried to root one before.
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Kokuso #20 roots pretty easy compared to some Mulberry. I have assumed that the Kokuso #20 offered by USDA UC Davis is the Kokuso offered by nurseries, but the # 20 has always made we wonder. Does anyone know if they are the same? As far as 5b I could not say personally but a couple nurseries list it to zone 5 and very hardy.
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thanks for your input
I grafted a bunch of mulberries onto the Geraldi Dwarf this spring. I can report definitively that GD doesn’t dwarf the variety grafted on. While the GD is 5’ tall after 5+ years, there are at least 3 grafts which have grown more than that this year.
Kokuso Graft- you can see the temflex tape near the bottom of the pic. It was hanging loosely on the graft and I knocked it off for the pic.
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I was wondering about that and you answered the question. Now I wonder if it would reduce vigor after a few years. I’d love to find a way to slow down Illinois Everbearing. After an early summer pruning it still grew an additional 8 ft. I don’t know if there are any slow growing quality mulberries that can handle 0 degrees.
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I found this wild mulberry tree at the corner of my lot because the birds are going crazy over it. I went over to taste the fruits and I was supprized how sweet and tasty they were.
Tony
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This past weekend, my kids and I put a drop cloth under our wild mulberry tree and shook the limbs. It rained mulberries!
I’ve now got about a gallon or so of them in the fridge. This weekend I plan to make mulberry syrup!
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Those of you who cook with your mulberries, how do you deal with the stems that stay on the fruit? I can’t imagine picking them off one by one.
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We eat the stems right along with the fruit.
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They look so much like a blackberry…very nice for a wild tree.
I’ve always thought of them as a weed tree…they pop up in my yard every year and grow like a weed. There are some large mulberries not far from my house…i’ll have to go investigate the berry quality.
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all this talk about mulberries…makes me think I need to add one to the collection…Don’t know that I’ve seen them down here, seems like they woud well…
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Jeremy I think you could grow the really nice Persian mulberries!
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yeah I was looking on the Just Fruit and Exotics site they carry quite a few varieties…I saw pakistan, but not Persian and they were pretty much sold out of everything…guess I’ll wait until next year…
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Has anybody else found mulberries extremely variable? I’ll love a tree one year, but then be very unimpressed with it the next. I haven’t seen any consistency in any of the wilds one I’m tracking so far.
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Yes. Rain at harvest is a huge factor. Dry weather equals sweet berries. Wet weather dillutes the taste.
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That could be part of it, but I feel like my good and bad trees just keep swapping places. The white-fruited one that became my first mulberry graft 2 years back is producing fruit that isn’t even worth eating this time around. I was hoping to make a named variety out of that tree! Meanwhile, some trees that were poor producers last year are picking up the slack this time around.
Maybe in future years I’ll be able to discern a pattern.
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Clark, those mulbs you’ve got there LOOK as good as any mulb I’ve ever tasted. Does their taste match their good looks?
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