This year was my first winter with my mulberries. I got the classic Illinois Everbearing for my area, but also picked up a different variety as well called, “Issai.” A bit of an impulse buy, but that’s besides the point.
The Issai woke up in February and IE woke up at the same time as my other trees. Issai got blasted with a frost. February is wayyyy to early and it lost 90-95% of the new growth it put on last year. It’s budding from the base no problem, but I lost all that fruit.
So my question… should I dig this guy up and put him in the compost pile or wait another year? I’m curious to know if some of you have the same problem with some of your mulberry varieties.
I have the same story with my Issai Ross. Leaves out in February and then got toasted. by the cold. I planted it in ground. Leaves are starting to come back but if it blooms that early again I see no reason to have it.
Yes Issai is a dwarf. Supposed to only get about 4 feet which was one of the things that attracted me to it. I bought it partly for ornamental reasons. The fruit was a bonus. The fruit I got from it last year was not very tasty. Had a grassy taste.
2 months, I don’t know… I guess that depends on climate. I live in a coastal 7a. We had a very mild winter with temperatures around -10 to +10°C (14 to 50° F).
I have a Wellington and several nigra potted up in my greenhouse. Wellington woke up a month ago (showing first set of leaves and fruits) and got severly damaged by a late frost (even in the greenhouse). The nigras woke up 2 weeks later. They have swollen buds and show green but no leaves yet. They didn’t change much since 2 weeks, maybe they are reacting to the current cold spell we have around here. They didn’t get damaged by the frost. At first glance I thought so, cause the buds looked a little darker to me as before the frost. But now I can see the buds getting bigger showing a bright green color. The first leaves should emerge in a matter of days. So for me the difference between Wellington and nigra (Jerusalem) is aproximately 1 month.
There it seems to be a difference in the different nigra cultivars. My Jerusalem is at least 2-3 weeks ahead of my Sham Dudu. That might be a singular phenomenon though, cause I got the Sham Dudu this winter and the Jerusalem last year.
This spring I planted in my garden a Morus bombycis “Shin-Tso” and a Geraldi Dwarf. Shin Tso started early (at the same time as Wellington) and got hit very hard by that late frost a week ago. I hope its hanging on, will see. Geraldi Dwarf has not broken buds til now. I’m even a little concerned about this fact but maybe it is breaking dormancy just a little later (like my nigras). Both plants I ordered and received this spring from the same nursery.
It is good to know that Geraldi is leafing out late. I grafted it this spring. The grafts have green swollen buds for a month now, but they do not go any further. The main rootstock morus alba is leafing as well as the local trees. I started to worry that something is wrong with the grafts, but it seems like Geraldi is just being late.
My 2 Geraldi leaf out about the same time as my local wild types. They don’t seem particularly late or early compared to others, although I don’t have other named varieties so I can’t be sure. I have a larger mulb in my back yard that I think is a rubra/alba hybrid, but was here before I moved in and has pretty good fruit so I’m not sure if that was planted by a human as a goodish variety or it was bird-planted and I just got lucky. My Geraldi trees are on about the same schedule as that one as well. This is their third leaf.
I grafted Geraldi to 2 seedlings that were bird-planted in my yard and their leaves are just now emerging. I think I grafted about 3-4 weeks back, when the seedlings already had their first leaves out. They are just a bit behind my apple and pear grafts. I’ll try to take some pictures and post those later today. I also have 3 seedlings I potted up last year that I intended to graft Geraldi to and probably still will, but I’m wondering if it is a bit late. Since those are in pots, I may graft them and keep them in my basement to callous since it is getting pretty warm out now and I’ve had less luck with grafting outside once the heat hits.
@Antmary I had heard from others that it is tough to have good success grafting mulbs before the rootstock is actively pushing growth. So that might be an issue, depending when you grafted. Or you might just not have had enough warm weather yet and still be in good shape, so hopefully if the scions haven’t dried out you still have a shot at success. The 2 I grafted already are on a bit larger diameter seedlings than the scion, so they had plenty of strength and I’m in 7a so should be ahead of you as well.
You are in zone 7 so I should be somewhat behind you and if your Geraldi leaves are just emerging then mine should be fine with green buds by now. My scions look very much alive and well so far, they just do not grow or change their state. Since they were grafted a long time ago, they had plenty time to die and if they did not, it is a good sign
I think the seedlings around me are mostly rubra/alba mixes, since I was told most wild type supposedly have a bit of each in them around here. But I’ll take a closer look when I get home to see if I can figure it out for sure.
I can’t even remember for sure what Geraldi is supposed to be. I think Whitman farms had it listed as Alba, Burnt Ridge says Macroura and I’ve heard various people say rubra/alba hybrid and one said alba/nigra, but that seems doubtful. Does anyone know?
Clark in KS and I did the Che experiment last year that failed and I converted 20 large ( diameter range around 4" to 12") mulbs understocks to Girardi, Oscar, Kokuso, and IE 2 weeks ago. Most of them are pushing green buds right now.I will follow with some photos of growth in about 3 weeks from now.
How confident are we that it really is part nigra? It seems so hard to get reliable information in this area. I’m very interested in getting some black mulberries mixed into my stock, but the most reliable info seems to say that it’s not happening in my zone.
Although, I will say that Jerry Lehman did show me a seedling which he was confident is a nigra hybrid. (He got it from somebody who planted nigra seeds and only had albas around to pollinate.) Currently sitting in a greenhouse, but he’ll be testing it for hardiness eventually.
My dwarf everbearing mulberry woke up about a month earlier (about February in Dallas) than my silk hope mulberry which seemed way to early to me. We still get ice or snow storms in February. I was lucky this year nothing like that happened this year
