Do I have to worry about Illinois Everbearing mulberry getting popcorn disease in zone 8A Maryland? If yes, is Silk Hope resistant and a better choice?
From what I have read the susceptibility is mainly due to warm humid weather. I have no effects on my IE here in Kent, Wa and my summer temps run about 5-6 degrees lower than yours so I would expect if you have a sunny open area that receives lots of ventilation, you would not have an environment conducive to fungal infections. My tree is about 25 years old. A friend living in Tennessee much south of you never complains about popcorn on his mulberry trees so, I would expect your climate should work well!
Dennis
Kent, Wa
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Couple hours west of you I have IE and a few others. Popcorn has not been an issue for me.
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Just curious, is this popcorn disease or something else? Looks like mulberry leaves (but havenāt seen fruit, so im not entirely sure its a mulberry). Does popcorn disease affect fruit and leaves?
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I ran Google Lens on the first of the two images that you posted. The results came back that it is Eriophyes tiliae, which is a type of mite.
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Zone 7b western NC and I finally gave up on my 15 year old illinois everbearing. The first 10 years were great, then it started with a few % popcorned fruit. This year, every single fruit, tens of thousands of them, were popcorned. I chopped it down to stumps and stuck cuttings under the bark. Silk hope, tehama, varaha, kokuso. I donāt have enough experience with any of those varieties to recommend them. Silk hope did have a few kernels with popcorn under the extreme pressure that my current infestation provided, but Im hoping it can resist the disease after i stop IE from fruiting at all. Why not go with a variety that has some resistance like gerardi or silk hope? The risk of this plague is just too high. My next course of action will be to look for a systemic fungicide, but Iām not holding out much hope that mulberries are on the label of any of them.
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Of your various mulberry varieties, which do you like best for taste/texture? I read that Silk Hope and Shangri La have superior taste.
where are you located?
Philadelphia PA. Saw that in a park
Popcorn Disease on Illinois Everbearing fruits.
Iām located about 70 miles NW of Nashville TN, zone 7a.
My IE trees are 30 yrs oldā¦no PD issues for the first 15 years or so, but eventually, the fungus āfoundā them. A significant portion of the first flush of fruits is lost to PD each year.
I have not seen PD on Lawson Dawson or Corral - or on pure M.alba or M.rubra, for that matter.
I have only seen less than a handful of PD-infected berries on Silk Hope(tree here is at least 25 y.o.), and those, for the first time, just last year.
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@Lucky_P Thanks. Pls remind me of your favorite mulberry. Is it even possible to net a huge mulberry tree from birds? Or just try to out-produce the birds a better strategy? If yes, then maybe all crop in short harvest window is best like Kokuso?
@hamboneā¦ picking a favorite is tough.
IE is hard to beat for flavor, year-in/year-out. I like Silk Hopeā¦a lot.
Lawson Dawson flavor this spring has been fantastic. I need to step back out to the barnlot and sample Corral (and itās sib) and the LD trees in the barnyard.
I really like my M.rubra selection, āHarmony Groveā, but, while quite productive for a rubra, it still falls well short of the hybrids.
āWellingtonā - or whatever the tree I purchased as Wellington is, is a dog here, though its berries were a little better this springā¦ but that doesnāt make up for 25 yrs of sucking.
I had Kokuso for yearsā¦ just as a couple of lower branches in a larger M.alba, never as a free-standing tree. Berry size was good, flavor was just OK, productivity was low - but that may have been a function of shading. Pruned those limbs off a couple of years ago, and have not really missed itā¦ but perhaps I oughta beg some scions next spring and give it another try.
I canāt imagine trying to net any of my mulberries - but Iāve never done any pruning to attempt to control size, either. Most of mine are large treesā¦ 20+ ft tall, with 30-40 ft spread. More than the critters and I can eat.
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The leaf in your photo, judging by the veins ,is an Elm leaf.
Not a mulberry.
The ā bumps ā caused by aphids or mites, not popcorn disease.
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Shangri la is a large good tasting berry, but it has a short harvest window and is very susceptible to spring freezes, this year was the first year out of 15 that i got a full crop. Usually it only reaches 20 percent of its potential. I have never seen popcorn disease on it, and it makes a nice shade tree.
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Gotcha, thanks for the clarification. The leaves looked like something āpopped upā from them so i just assumed.
Had Silk Hope. Taste is basically IE, but the fruit is much smaller. Never tried Shangri La. I got rid of all of my varieties except IE, Kokuso, and Pakistan. I considered those the biggest and best. Grafted the others over to those varieties as well.
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Found this on a mulberry group on Facebook. If it is right, then the problem is not myccorhizal. The fruiting bodies form at the soil surface. A lawn treatment of fungicide might kill it and still be within compliance of the label.
. Credit to Eliza Greenman.
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