I think Sweet Lavender was a little better than Beautiful Day. I also think that a white in my best friend’s yard is just as good, though not as large.
I like them for drying. You must pick them carefully because unripe ones have a grassy flavor and over-ripe ones are just insipid or worse.
Scott
ill look forward to trying sweet lavender hopefully this summer! yeah white ones i think if too ripe they just sort of melt in mouth like cotton candy.
I read that IE is hibrid and seedless. For my surprise I found several seeds in some of the fruits. It’s first fruiting for me and I wonder is this normal or I have wrong variety.
I put these seeds in wet towel and one have sprouted after only several days!
IE is a hybrid, but not necessarily seedless…if there is a male rubra, alba, or hybrid in the vicinity, there will be seeds.
Can someone compare illinois everbearing to the common wild types found all over the midwest? I probably have 100 of those growing around my property and really love some of them, wondering if this fruit is noticeably better than those found in the wild or is it more the everbearing/larger size part thats most appealing? If the fruit is quite a bit better tasting than the wild type i definately want to add one of these to my ordering list for next year. If its not much of a jump in flavor not sure itd be worth it for me.
I’m sure wild ones taste different in other locations, but the wild ones here are pretty pitiful. If you really want a mulberry I would buy a named one. Vastly better in my opinion.
IE has a very good flavor, with good sweet/tart balance, and bears heavily, over a 6-8 wk period, here.
Better, by far, in all respects, than most ‘wild’ M.alba trees I’ve encountered, and bear more heavily than any M.rubra. But, I have several random hybrids that I’ve collected - including one that popped up in the orchard here, presumably an IE seedling, that rival IE for flavor and productivity.
Thats all i needed to know. Ill be buying one of thesr next spring!
I have 2 of those. They are good. 
Have a few other even better for my taste, dunno if you can get them there in the states
Performance of specific varieties will vary from place to place…Wellington sucks here, Collier was no great shakes but they’re well-respected elsewhere. I prefer Silk Hope to any others I’ve grown.
Gelso Nero so far is my favourtie behind morus nigra which is the best
Sorry to be a bummer, but I am planning on removing my Illinois everbearing mulberry. It just keeps growing to big and is shading everything around it. I could deal with that but I never get any fruit as the birds eat them before I get to them. Mine is such a fast grower it requires pruning weekly or it takes over like a boss.
I had grafted a Pakistan mulberry which is doing well so I’ll stick with that.
Jim, when are you planning to do this? id be interested in some cuttings to graft and try to root if you’d be interested in sharing.
I can wait till spring to cut it down so that I can make some cutting when domant for you and anyone else who might want some… there should be plenty. Not a problem at all.
Growth rate is amazing. I also constantly prune mine. My neighbor has chickens so I give him the 6 ft cuttings and the chickens eat them. The fruit is very good but the gray cat birds eat it most of it.
Catbirds are unstoppable.
I have bird netting over my blueberries and for a month the catbirds have been bouncing on the netting trying to get in. They never give up. They ate all my honeybreries, cherries, gooseberries and black currants this year. Last year I had resident hawks so it wasn’t so bad.
Catbirds lol! Do cats fly in your part of the world
Just joking
Had to look online, north American bird. We don’t have them in Europe
or in n. Maine. crows are our biggest culprit here.
Illinois Everbearing was a great berry for me until it was infected with popcorn disease. My tree is about 25 year old and 30 feet tall and across. It bears huge crops for at least 2 months. Berries are about 1 inch by 1/2 inch in size with great flavor. Unfortunately, mulberry popcorn disease renders about 99% inedible. I need to establish some other varieties that are resistant. I had one scion of silk hope growing well until something chewed it up and ripped it down. There are so many wild albas here that the birds cannot eat them all. Seedlings come up everywhere, but berries are mostly small and almost tasteless.