I have a white mulberry tree that is now big enough to require pruning. Do they fruit on the current year’s growth or previous year’s growth or both? I wish to avoid pruning away this year’s harvest. Thanks.
Both in my experience here in 10b/11a.
I received my Girardi Mulberry August 11th in the midst of an historic hear wave here in South Louisiana.
Like most shipped trees it was a single leader.
It popped a new branch about 2/3rds down and as you can see has grown well.
First time even seeing a mulberry tree in person much less growing it, so I also don’t know about pruning.
My thought is come late winter I cut back the original leader trunk to a bit above the new growth lateral shown…assuming it will push a few more laterals after that next spring.
Can someone with a Girardi confirm that this looks like a Girardi? I no longer have mine, but the distance between nodes was shorter on mine and it had smaller leaves.
I think the consensus is what I received is not Gerardi even if it was sold as such.
I will hopefully be grafting it over to Gerardi in a month or two.
I had previously bought two of the same “not-Girardis” from the same nursery as @Shibumi and ended up developing the same suspicions because of the large distance between internodes. In order to compare, I bought two more Girardis from Lucille Whitman at Whitman Farms (a lady who definitely knows her mulberries). The internode distance on the WF Girardis was noticeably shorter.
I posted pictures of the two types here for comparison: Why Gerardi is a dwarf mulberry - #107 by marten
As @Shibumi mentioned, the consensus from the more experienced mulberry growers was that only the WF Girardis were genuine.