Mulberry grafting questions.....and success!

Way to go joleneakamama! I did nine dormant root grafts this spring…only two took (my success rate on normal grafting is at least 80%). I was ready to claim that root grafts don’t work for mulberry…Thank you for proving me wrong. In my defense though (if stupidity is allowed), I was attempting to use four to six inch pieces of root.

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I don’t remember the length very well, but the thinner one was probably only 6-8 inches, the other one was thick, and may have been over a foot long.
I did do them all when it was warm enough for the Mulberry stock to be pushing leaves.

I had no expectations though, as the roots felt like withered carrots, and there wasn’t a cambium layer like there is on the wood that I could identify.
I’m going to try sweating the other graft, that is just sitting there, and see if it helps. The stock is still pushing stuff under the graft. Getting it hot and hydrated might help.

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strong work! And the foliage, even though tiny, are bonafide nigras :slight_smile:

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And that is why the Mulberry grafting project was one I was very excited about. I tasted the berries off the tree I got those scions from, and they were outstanding! They rival raspberries for flavor without all the seeds and thorns. :smiley:
They were very staining, and very tasty! I thought the Black Mulberry description fit this tree.

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exactly! Btw, when you say the source of your scions is a tree, how big is the tree canopy( i just read it is ~9feet tall, but curious about width of canopy)? Are you in So Cal?
you don’t have to answer all my questions. Admittedly nosy due to the intriguing provenance of your successful endeavor :slight_smile:

evidently the norm for nigras on albas. Maybe albas seem to channel sap in greater amounts than nigras, so perhaps no need to be of equal caliper with the nigra graft.

similar scenario for our trees here Purple reign - #70 by jujubemulberry

I’m in zone 8 Arizona, in the mountains by Prescott. Hubby says the tree is probably taller then I said, and about ten feet wide.
The odd thing was maybe five foot high graft union, that was thicker then the trunk.

The tree looked like it was often freeze damaged. I’m thinking about sharing trees with my family in Phoenix, but I’ll bet their neighbors would hate me.

Questions are always welcome. This forum has been such a blessing, and encouragement to me…I’m just paying it back, and forward, as I can.

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Thanks @joleneakamama

10 feet wide is HUGE in nigra terms(in usa). Your neighbor is a lucky fellow(or a proactive one who started early).

may well do that without your neighbor complaining about you taking too many branches . A 10 ft wide canopy should be producing a whole lot more berries than your neighbors actually need.

if tracked indoors and on light-colored carpet, then yes, their neighbors might complain! On concrete, the stains may linger for a while but disappear after a few months.

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These grafts look fantastic, thanks for sharing!

Anyone try bench grafting mulberries with a callusing pipe? My success rate with mulberries is terrible as compared with every other species.

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Sometimes I gotta keep grafting them. Chip budding is still my favorite means of propgation and it’s w/o callus pipes. You simply continue chip budding thru July until they finally take. I use June greenwood as well as dormant scions I keep around until I get something grafted, or I fail.

Dax

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Thanks Dax. I will keep trying until I succeed OR run out of wood :laughing:

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First mulberry I ever grafted was just a routine T-bud placement in midsummer with budstick collected that day.

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Mulberry can be very hard to graft or very easy. The longer i do it the more i think the problem is the same as grapes which is flooding. Maples are like that to which is why they are tapped for syrup. The sap gushes out of cuts in the spring. That is good to know if your ever in a survival situation with nothing to drink cut off a maple branch of any maple and it will fill a 5 gallon bucket with watery sap in a day. It can be the difference in living or not. Back to my theory mulberry bleed heavily and so i think certain grafts will be more successful than others. Grafts like tbuds with little damage will likely be the best. Grafts like cleft i suspect will be the worst with mulberry because of the extent of the damage. Clefts have worked for me before but i suspect that was due to the location of the branch. It was a side branch with less sap flow.

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I do mostly just a simple bark graft, but since I’ve read, here, of so many people having issues…anymore, I make a couple of semi-girdling cuts in the bark of the rootstock, below the graft.
If excessive bleeding is likely to be a problem, those gashes should allow ‘bleeding off’, rather than flooding the graft.
I’m not removing bark, just making a couple of quick slashes most of the way around the stem.

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i did that in 21’ and this year on my alba and they still didnt take. I.D.K?

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anyone had success just cutting larger material, like 1.5-2 inch thick wood and burying it?

I vaguely recall reading somewhere that this was a means of propagating mulberries.

I think I’m getting old…lol

Scott

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I’d seen that…claims you could plant a truncheon as big as a man’s arm and it would root and grow.
I stuck a couple hundred M.alba/hybrid cuttings along fencelines one winter, ranging from about 3/4 inch diameter, up to 3 inches.
Mary a one took, as we say.

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I love it. Apologize if this has been asked, I’m just reading this thread, but on your root graft, does that mean you dug up a root cutting and grafted directly to that piece of root?

I don’t have any mulberry rootstock, but am planning on getting some scionwood to graft to a root sucker. Now that I’ve been looking, I’m liable to have more scions than places to put them. The notion of using a piece of root is appealing.

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I’ve grafted a few hundred in the hot pipe. Sweated first, they don’t bleed too badly. Bark or cleft grafts grow just fine. Copious suckers will follow though.

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