Hi! Thankyou for your time, i would appreciate so much if you could help me
I have a white mulberry tree, its the reason i rented this place 12 years ago. Owner doesnt really care about it and theres so much i can do for it since its not my property and i have been trying to figure out how to help save it but one in my city has been able to give me answers, i have been asking for years and everyone says i should cut it down but i dont wannna…the owner recently came to cut some of its dead branches because hes affraid it will damage the cars arround it and get sued (Im from Mexico, Houses here are next to eachother and everyone’s cars are just outside on the street).
I can only watch in pain, cause its still alive! If someone could help me pointing me in the right direction, giving me a diagnosis or something i might be able to talk some sense into my landlord, hes a good guy tbh but he just gave up on my beautiful tree when its still fighting for its life…you should have seen its canopy 4 years ago. It makes me wanna cry. I feel so sad
I hope you can see the pics, i dont understand the site very well yet. I just made the account because i saw a pic on google from this site that reminded me how the tree looked like when it started getting sick
Ok, understand your situation! If you can find someone with a chainsaw to simply remove the tree all way down to a simple stump but not disturbing those new healthy shoots coming from its roots, that is your best remedy. In two years the new shoots will be producing fruits again, as those shoots reach 3-4’ tall start training them to grow apart in each direction of the compass to maximize sun exposure. Once those shoots are tall enough, about 5’ high start selecting the top three limbs to save for spreading around the circle and top each vertical growing shoot. Then train each remaining limb to fill in the circle in an umbrella type design as they grow. Remove any limb that grows vertical after you get them all trained into an umbrella shape and your circle is filled with low growing fruit producing limbs.
Find a way to mulch this tree immediately so that the feeder roots that go out as far as the original drip line are throughly watered. Probably about 10-12’ from the trunk. Mulberry needs very little fertilizer, but mulching about 3-5” deep with woodchips will promote very fast recovery of those healthy shoots. Remove all the old wood from the property to avoid a repeat of infection. Use exterior latex paint to seal up the stump as soon as the top is sawed off to help prevent further infection.
This is my best advice, to save it you must remove it completely but save its fresh new shoots and mulch, mulch, mulch and make sure the mulch stays moist during the dry summer growing season.
Best wishes, my guess is that your tree suffers from verticillium wilt. Ie mulberry had something similar but has fully recovered!
Dennis
Kent, wa
Thankyou so so much for your advice, what you say it had was what i thought initially but im no expert in trees, i was just assuming because of a paper i read online about the diseases on Mulberries but could never confirm it and i was worried i was gonna make more damage than good, back then the tree looked week but still had a bunch of leaves, this year was almost all completely gone.
I will show this to my landlord and ask him to let me try save it. He wants to cut it down because he thinks its far gone and the roots already did a lot of damage to the concrete over the years (i keep telling him to let me turn it into a garden but hes just not interested even when im doing it for free and designing something super low manteinance like creeping thyme and native plants)
Maybe if he sees i have a solid plan he will let me do it since im not leaving this place unless he asks me too. I already took care of all the branches, thanks for the advice too:sparkling_heart: i live in Mexico, in a city called Chihuahua, its 3 hours away from El paso Texas so i guess we have the same type of biome:relaxed:
Hi Kirino,
You are very welcome. Yes, I hope your landlord is cooperative, the tree roots are not likely to spread anymore than they already have. But in your climate watering the tree is critical to its success in fruiting and regrowing once you remove all the older wood. Mulching is also essential to keep the tree healthy, not sure what materials you have locally in your area for mulching, but I’m sure you can create something from other organic sources. For example, I use my lawnmower to chop up all my fresh prunings of other fruit trees and that material makes an excellent mulch. Best wishes and good luck with your endeavors
Dennis
Kent, wa
If someone could help me pointing me in the right direction, giving me a diagnosis or something i might be able to talk some sense into my landlord, hes a good guy tbh but he just gave up on my beautiful tree when its still fighting for its life…you should have seen its canopy 4 years ago. It makes me wanna cry. I feel so sad
i live in Mexico, in a city called Chihuahua, its 3 hours away from El paso Texas so i guess we have the same type of biome:relaxed: