This thread illustrates, to some degree, how mulberry varieties can vary in performance from place to place. My friend, the late Gordon Nofs, of Flint MI, said that IE was one of the poorest mulberries he’d grown, but the one he sent me that was his favorite was just ‘meh’ for me here in southern KY. I read/hear all these reports of how productive ‘Hicks Everbearing’ is/was, and how important it was in pre-industrial farm production of poultry and pork, particularly in The South… but it is a dog here… granted, pigs and chickens don’t cull or pass up much, but I can point to any number of random rubraXalba hybrids that are vastly more productive than my graft of Hicks; I’ll be retaining it just for its historical significance, but I won’t be grafting any more of it.
I love IE, but for the past 15 years, I lose the vast bulk of the crop to Popcorn Disease. Silk Hope, for me, produces fruits that are probably 40-50% larger than those of IE, and I’ve not yet had significant PD issues with it(knock on wood) in the 20+ yrs it’s been growing here. IDK if that signals some level of resistance to infection, or if the spores just haven’t really made it to it yet in large enough numbers to get the fungal cycle established.