Pruning mulberry tree

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.

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Both in my experience here in 10b/11a.

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Jan shows how she does it…

She likes to keep hers low.

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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.


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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.

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