I grow and graft Illinois everbearing and a white seedling variety called Snow white, that are both quite tasty. I like the long harvest window of these varieties usually early July to mid August here in Quebec. We have rubra and alba growing wild and mostly the fruit taste is good, it depends on the season and the soil type ( i think) soils here are loamy to clay loams and quite rich in minerals so maybe that affects flavour. Harvest window for rubra and alba is usually only about 3 weeks tops here. I’m wondering if there’s natural hybridization happening between the rubra and alba species? Anyone know something about this
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Everything I have read shows them as readily hybridized. I have most wild trees similar to an alba, I have no idea if I have even seen rubra.
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welcome neighbor! im right across the border from Edmunston, NB. i have Riverview mulberry and Northrop mulberry but both havent fruited yet. planted 3 I.E last fall but were only 6in. seedlings. hopefully they do as well for me as they have for you.
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Thanks Steve, I’m not familiar with Northrup or Riverview varieties but your Illinois should grow quickly sometimes 5 ft per year.
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how big are they when they start to fruit? Northrop is from a tree found in upstate N.Y growing/ fruiting in z3b. and Riverview is from a tree growing/ fruiting in Oregon overhanging a river in z4a. both came from nursery selections.
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I collect, propagate mulberry at my place, and have been on the lookout for trees growing when I travel. IE, Collier, Northrop and a potted Gerardi have all produced fruit here. There are a few mature trees nearby, one is likely a m alba in a cemetery, then there are a few yard trees which I think are hybrids. Haven’t found any that taste as good as IE, though the yard trees have good sized fruit and are quite productive the flavor is still mildly rich and sweet
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Illinois grow fast and usually start to fruit in 2-3 yrs (from graft) maybe 6-8 ft tall with lateral branches.
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the seedlings of I.E i planted last fall were just that, grown from seed so on its own roots. hopefully its hardy enough to survive here. i have a M.alba from cold stream thats already 3in diameter that ive been trying to graft over to I.E for 3 yrs. now but no luck.
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I have an exceptional seedling mulberry - which I’m presuming is a seedling of IE… one of a couple that popped up in my blueberries some years ago, and were transplanted to sites around the barnlot. This one is comparable to, if not better, than IE. Really liking it a lot!
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This interesting as I’ve yet to seen any real talks of IE progenys anywhere - in fact I thought that it was sterile! How does it differ from IE ? I have though about breeding mulberries and gathering now all the best genotypes to use in my trials, so all new info is valuable.
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IE is not sterile. Most blurbs you’ll find on the internet say ‘self-fertile’… but I suspect the more appropriate term would be parthenocarpic…
I’ve not noticed male/staminate flowers on any of the named-variety fruiting mulberries in my orchard, so I’m not necessarily buying the ‘self-fertile’ claims. That said, I have seen monoecious mulberries, and have seen trees ‘change genders’, from fruiting/female to staminate/male in different years; my IE trees are nearly 30 years old… far too large for me to inspect every branch or twig for staminate flowers.
I don’t know what is supplying pollen in my orchard, but there are wild and seedling mulberries around… While I can’t prove that my ‘Corral’ mulberry is actually an IE seedling, it is very similar to IE in most respects. Of course, its parents could be miles away, as the seed it grew from was likely deposited after a trip through a bird’s digestive tract.
Several years back, we purchased a bundle of 100 ‘Red mulberry’ seedlings from the State Forestry nursery, and planted them out along fencelines to provide shade for the cattle. There is not a single M.rubra in the bunch… they are all hybrids… most tending toward the trashy M.alba side of the equation, sadly. Coincidentally, I had that discussion with an area state forester this week, and he sheepishly admitted that they know they’re not selling M.rubra… while they can’t control pollenation, they’re not even taking care to collect seed from known M.rubra trees… just any ‘mulberry’ they can find.
Had a conversation this week with a friend who’s in the early stages of building up a nursery providing plants for reforestation/afforestation projects in the Northeast. Mulberries are one of their species of interest, so I’ve been contracted to collect fruit from superior named varieties and winnow out the seeds for planting.
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@elivings1 … strudledog describes his Girardi as sweet tart… very similar to IE…
Loaded with nice sized very good berries for a couple months. His looked to be maby 7-8 ft tall but he said it out produces his bigger trees.
He said that some report it as being a slow grower… but not for him. He showed one that he grafted on top of another variety that failed there… and it had grown 4 ft in 1 year
He is in North GA. I am in South TN.
Perhaps they just need some southern heat and humidity to do well… I am going to try one here soon.
Silk Hope also.
Last summer I drove to town one day and stopped at a stop sign and noticed a mulberry the city had planted by the sidewalk… 20 ft tall and loaded with nice sized black berries. I am going to forage that one some this year… and if good collect some scion wood.
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FWIW, I had 3 Gerardi bushes, currently only 2. I find the fruit to be good, similar to IE. But there are two problems, both related to the short nodes: First, the “trees” make a LOT of branches. I really need to prune aggressively to develop a dwarf tree rather than a dense bush. Second, the fruit load is very heavy, creating strain on the branches. I’ve had a lot of breaks.
The short size also makes the trees vulnerable to pests. Many years a woodchuck will climb into the tree and strip all the leaves. I’m pretty sure that it was the weight of the woodchuck that broke one tree at the graft.
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How do the (re)foresters propose to keep away deer?
From what live seen, deer will trample each other to get to mulberry leaves. I wouldn’t think that small trees in unprotected forest would stand a chance.
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That is what one grows like near me (northern GA) strudledog. That looks somewhat ideal to me… easy pickings… I hope to have grandkids some day… this one would be kid friendly.
My grandmother had a mulberry when I was a kid… 40 ft tall… it is a wonder I survived all the tree climbing I did as a kid.
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@jrd51 … I think the taller mulberries IE Silk Hope… you fight to keep them short enough (with aggressive pruning… polarding)… so you can reach the fruit… lots of folks on YouTube doing that. With Girardi (in the south) sounds like you may have to prune some to thin it out. Strudledog did not mention any pruning on his… but it is quite bushy.
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I certainly would not call it sweet/tart. I would call raspberries sweet/tart. I can attest it is a slow grower. I think part of that slow growing was due to mass amounts of mulberries. In less than a year my tree from Whitman farms had mulberries from top to bottom. Compare that to other fruit trees where you end up waiting 3-10 years to get a crop or 15 for a lot of nut trees. I can’t attest to how they reaction in the southern atmosphere because I am in Colorado. I also could just not like mulberries that much. I can also attest to animals loving mulberries like another user said. When my mulberries came from Whitman farms it had a Y shape to it. One branch broke off likely due to a animal and the morus Nigra also got eaten by animals here pretty quickly. That is one of the tricky things with small plants though. I have found my bigger trees like my cherries and peaches from Grow Organic Peaceful Valley to have little damage by animals and if they do they take off a side branch. Since those bigger trees don’t have fruit and are so big they require no protection from animals. My smaller mulberries and my small peaches from Stark Bros have required protection. Now my peaches will get much bigger in a year or two so hopefully I can lower the protection after that. My Girardi almost certainly would have required constant protection since I live in the mountains. A dwarfing tree is good for kids but I have started to stray away from dwarfing and started to go with standard of semi dwarfing if no standard is possible. I have done this so the root system goes deeper down to save on water in the future and you get more of a crop with a semi or standard fruit tree. Even though my Girardi was a few feet tall and producing top to bottom it would still likely only provide a few bowls of fruit. A standard tree you shake the tree and let it rain in the case of mulberries or something like apples, pears, cherries etc. they make tools to harvest the fruit.
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@elivings1 … I bought one from BRN spring 2020… this is what it looked like April 8th…
When it first budded out… fruit were developing… I was impressed with that.
That was one of our nasty late frost years… April 15… killed everything above the graft.
I left it in ground for several months… nothing above the graft survived. Worst case for young tender mulberry start.
No peaches, apples, acorns, etc that year.
Hoping to have better luck next time… and believe me I will keep the next one covered if late frost happens.
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jrd51,
IDK what their plans are. I’m just gonna be providing seeds… after that, it’s their issue.
Agree with you though… every critter loves a mulberry, and the deer will, as you said, browse the living daylights out of any leaves they can reach, and during the rut… no small tree of any species is immune to being rubbed and demolished. Here, the bucks will even dislodge tree tubes and wreck saplings, especially out in the open field… might not be quite the issue if they were in the woods. If I have a desirable tree small enough to be damaged… it’s gotta be caged.
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I had the same experience. I was not sure if it was because it was in the garage or what but mine came out of dormancy in March and our last frost is in May. I think I was eating mulberries in July. I had read online mulberries are late to come out of dormancy and are typically one of the last to come out. My Girardi was the first to come out of dormancy however. It took until May or April to see leaves but my cherries outside did not come out until late May and my Morus Nigra mulberries in the garage did not come out of dormancy until late April or May which is a entire month later. Like I and many others on here said because of how small it is the Girardi has issues other mulberries just do not have. Like others mentioned even if they outdo the cold you will have problems with deer, we had certain insects on them and am not sure what that was about. Deer are not a issue with a regular mulberry because a regular mulberry will put out a few feet of growth per year. I would just say the Girardi mulberry was not for me because of it’s slow growth habit and like I said I was not impressed with the berries it produced. Maybe there are other varieties I would like though. I know with oranges for example many people like the Navel Orange but to me the Navel orange has nothing to it. Meanwhile I love Cara Cara oranges because they have more of a zest to it.
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