That makes a lot of sense. Our berries also fell off at green/red stage and incredibly sour even when black.
Here are some photos.I removed the lower branching because I want to make it a small tree and I think I’ll be pruning a bit this month. Is 4 feet too high for a 2 year old tree? Is that how you’re able to determine that it is an off year because the tree is growing a lot?
Do you think it would be possible to graft Noir Spain onto a black beauty?
how big was it when you obtained it? It seems like it had a thick caliper for a rootstock when you obtained it, which encourages rapid growth.
not necessarily, as poor production can be weather-related. However, plenty of moisture and nitrogen can also affect production. I don’t fertilize our mulberries, and don’t have data, but will wager that low nitrogen fertilizers with relatively high phospate and potash would encourage berry production
unless one is getting bumper crops of nigra berries that wouldn’t know what to do with, i wouldn’t prune nigra’s, since we want our trees to have seasoned wood. The older the wood, the more likely for subsequent stems/buds to bear good berries. Here in vegas, our nigra’s stems grow 4" to 6" per year, developing short, tortuous/gnarly stems. Growth may be painstakingly slow, but it seems to have an inverse relationship with quality of berries produced. As the short gnarly stems also tend to produce fat buds(often thicker than the stems they are borne on), and such buds are more likely to produce excellent berries than berries coming from buds which were thinner–relative to the stems that they have developed from. With nigras, bud thickness vs. stem thickness is predictive of the quality of berries that will be produced. And it is from older wood which gnarly/nody stems develop from(ultimately), that prime berries are likely to be borne
they are both of the nigra species, so the answer is a resounding yes-- considering that nigras can even be grafted to alba species, which is likely to be the rootstock your black beauty was grafted on.
incidentally, noir’s also exhibit leaf-form variability where we are at.
Can Nigra be grafted on Pakistan mulberry? Its possible for me to obtain large Pakistan mulberry trees. I wonder if I can use them as rootstock to accelerate the growth of a Nigra.
It was bareroot when we put it in, but the rootstock was healthy then too. It was about 2 feet of trunk bareroot and then branched out laterally more than horizontal. This year the lateral width is about the same and the height has doubled.
I also don’t fertilize any of the non-citrus fruit trees because I have found that once the tree starts fruiting, I have no problem getting fruit. Maybe I will try fertilizer for this tree, however.
Ok definitely no pruning. Thank you for explaining this.
This is a novice question, but is there such a thing as 1 graft overpowering another? I was reading that Noir Spain is a 30 foot tree. So if I were to graft this onto my root early next year, would I risk it taking too much energy and stunting the Black Beauty because its a standard?
i haven’t tried that yet, maybe others can answer this question. Some taxonomists identify paks as Morus macroura, while others dub it M. alba. Regardless of nomenclature, it is supposedly closely-related to other albas(and considering the geographical proximity of pakistan to middle east), i can bet my bottom dollar they are compatible. Nigra’s are compatible with alba’s native to china, so pakistan being so much closer would indicate it would be at least as closely related to nigra’s as alba’s are.
i did graft a couple of pak onto a noir nigra in feb this year(when paks were already leafing out), and neither of them took. Failure was likely unsatisfactory technique, but also likely to our unusually long winter, resulting in nigra sap taking forever to start flowing(as a result of protracted cold weather). Since you brought it up, will try to graft nigra this year onto pak, and vice-versa, when am sure both interstems are still flowing with sap. Hopefully at least one for each permutation will take despite the extreme heat we’ve been having lately.
here, paks grow just as fast as the generic alba’s(russian/chinese rootstock types), so not sure if it will accelerate growth. Btw, nigra’s will grow fast in shady conditions and good irrigation, but unfortunately will not accelerate ‘seasoning’ of wood. Interstems will be longer, and buds will be tiny relative to girth of stems, which equates to poor berries and low berry output relative to unit length of stem. Unlike precocious fruit species (like jujubes), beheading an old alba tree with an enormous trunk caliper and bark-grafting with nigra will result in fast nigra growth(about 2 feet in one year, even in full-sun conditions here in las vegas), but this is more of a physiological response to the large rootball, relative to the few nigra buds grafted to it, so the early nigra growth tends to be more vegetative in function than fruit-bearing in function.
nigras have long gestation periods, and live for hundreds of years, so many of us yanks are novices, considering it was merely imported to the americas relatively recently, and virtually all as grafts to alba rootstock. Noirs and persians will grow 30 feet, you bet, but probably not the trees am growing—for what’s left of my projected lifespan! Black beauty nigra’s don’t grow any faster or slower than noirs or persians, so will probably attain 30 feet or taller as well. What some nurseries sell as ‘dwarf black beauty mulberries’ are nothing more than a black beauty cultivar grafted low to an alba rootstock. A noir or persian grafted low will have the same rate of growth as the black beauty, all things being equal. As for grafts overpowering others, it will depend on vigor of rootstock and location of the grafts and species of grafts. Safe to say that an alba graft will be ‘prioritized’ by an alba rootstock over a nigra graft. I don’t see a noir being any better or worse than a persian or black beauty grafted on the same rootstock, other than location of respective grafts(amount of sunlight the grafts will be getting).
incidentally, folks across the atlantic have centenarian nigra’s, and i personally defer to. Check out @Carld 's nigra posts here . Nigra’s are old world natives, and can grow from seed, so possible some of these 30 ft tall trees are on own roots and have uniquely individual growth habits
LE Cooke’s Pakistani mulberry can you please tell me where you bought this variety online? it seems many place offer pakistani but not the LE cooke thank you
Hi. Can you tell me where you got your lavender mulberry from?
looks like like male pakistan. did they respond? i ordered many bareroot trees from them mostly died they didnt make it. when onegreenworld and raintree bareroot did just fine. i dont recommend them either. do you grow both thai dwarf and world best to compare side by side?
I don’t have ‘Thai Dwarf’…I have ‘World’s Best’ and ‘Chiang Mai #60’…They are very similar in growth habits and fruit, but the ‘Chiang Mai’ buds out about 10 days later than ‘World’s Best’. ‘Chiang Mai’ is also a little bit more fussy about nutrient requirements when very young, but seems fine once it gets established.
I heard Chiange mai #60, worlds best, dwarf issai, thai dwarf are similar. How does worlds best taste? is it sweet tart or just sweet? Does it have one or two crops? I had the issai dwarf it has two crops first one is average. more tart than sweet. The second crops is better more sweet.
World’s Best, Chiang Mai, and Issai all have similar growth habits, and Chiang Mai and World’s Best are very similar in taste…Both are firm in texture, which is good for picking and selling (Very popular in Thailand) and the fruits are not as sweet as some mulberries, but they have a pleasing taste and they make excellent cobblers, smoothies, cereal topping, ice cream, and wine (everyone loves my mulberry wine). All three cultivars are highly productive (my ~4 year old World’s Best produced well over 70 pounds this spring). Issai (in my opinion) has a weird taste, so I don’t eat it fresh, but still use it in making wine and it seems to do just fine in cobblers and such. All three cultivars will produce a fall crop, especially if they are pruned back (removing at least a third of their growth)…Fruit will start ripening about 8 weeks after they are pruned, so make sure you leave plenty of time before the first anticipated fall frost. And yes, I agree, the second fruiting is sweeter (albeit less productive fruiting).
I may have to try again on the dwarf ones. I just made the statement to myself that “I’m DONE!”
Just planted 6 mulberries…
BTW… one of them was Miss Kim — she is growing well.
Any final height/vigor info on this variety? Is it in line with Illinois Everbearing? I can’t find too much info on it.
Miss Kim
I don’t know too much about it either. It was given to me. I did get to taste the berries and they are super sweet but not sure as to height, etc. it is supposed to be later breaking bud and therefore miss the late frost which killed all my world’s best. @Livinginawe May have more info.
I don’t know much about ‘Miss Kim’ either. It has large, very nice tasting sweet fruit, but without the flavor complexities of perhaps ‘Silk Hope’, ‘Illinois Everbearing’, or a true Black Mulberry (‘Noir of Spain’, ‘Black Beauty’, ‘Persian’). But I am particularly fond of ‘Miss Kim’ because it breaks bud several weeks later than ‘Shangri-la’, but earlier than ‘Silk Hope’ and ‘Illinois Everbearing’, making it well suited for missing late frosts at my Gainesville Florida location. Here in Gainesville, summer is well underway before ‘Silk Hope’, ‘Illinois Everbearing’, and my ‘Persian’ break bud…By the time the fruit is ripe on these mulberries, the bugs are in control and the fruits ripening last get somewhat dehydrated from the heat. Give me twenty years and I will be able to tell you how tall the tree gets.
Today gives me the following in my orchard:
Illinois Everbearing
Silk Hope
Wellington
Oscar
Miss Kim
Local Red Mulberry
Hopefully soon I will have enough for the birds and perhaps I’ll get some too!!
Do mulberries like Silk Hope and Kokuso produce as young trees? Can I keep them small by pruning and holding back on water and still get fruit?
