I was wondering what time of year or what is the best temperature to root Mulberry cuttings. I have had limited success
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Welcome to the forum! If you search for your questions in the search bar, you’ll likely come up with some ideas for things like this. Good luck!
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In general Spring is the best time for most varieties before bud break
I have lights indoors to start peppers and tomatoes and whatever other veggies I decide to grow. So sometimes I start rooting cuttings indoors, but I prefer to do it in early spring.
I use DE the size of perlite to root in and cover with a Japanese tape called “Buddy Tape” Hard to find, it’s just like parafilm, but better IMHO. What this does is provide a consistent humidity on the exposed bark surface. Don’t use on part under the rooting material or soil. This avoids using humidity domes.
Some Mulberry, the hardy types, are hard to root. Others are easy.
This method will not work for cuttings that require misting like blueberries.
Right now I’m rooting figs with the method described above.
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I started rooting my fig cuttings 2/13 and a few days later got some Gerardi Mulberry cuttings in… (for grafting onto a variety that I want to change)… and got several of those so decided to try to root some too.
I have them in my fig cutting container, in 4x9 tree pots, same medium I am rooting my figs in. Pro Mix Hp.
They have a heat mat under them, and thermostat set on 78 degrees… and the temp bounces around between 74-78 degrees. I figure if it works for Figs… it should work for mulberries too.
Planning to give them root time (around 4 weeks) with no sun exposure, then move to a sunny window to encourage budding, shoots, leaves.
Roots before shoots, hopefully !!!
Top 6 figs… bottom 3 gerardi mulberry.
I prepped my mulberry cuttings same as this guy did, and used a little rooting hormone on them, cut the bottom just below a node, scraped the bark some to reveal cambium layer, dipped in rooting hormone, and poked in in the pot, settled the medium good around them. I have 3-4 buds under, 2 up top.
Hope it works… The guy in the vid just put his in a greenhouse and let them be… and had good success. He put several cuttings in one pot… and looks like all or most took. I put one per pot myself.
I have seen no significant change in the buds on my fig or mulberry cuttings, while in this dark location… which I think is good. I want them to be growing roots first.
Good Luck !
TNHunter
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I got some mulberry cuttings from FruitTreeAddict on Figbid (Jan Doolin), and watched all the videos I could find about how to root mulberry cuttings.
I tried three different methods, hoping that at least one would work
I did:
- Coco Coir in a red solo cup, with plastic over the branch
- Seed starting mix with extra perlite mixed in, in a red solo cup in a closed container
- laid in damp sand
on the ones in the cups, I scratched up the base of it a bit and rubbed on a little rooting powder
It will be interesting to see what happens… wish me luck!
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Good Luck @PcChip … some mulberry varieties root easily and others are just very difficult if not impossible.
I tried to rootcuttings of gerardi one spring… one month in dark cool place with bottom heat… then another month in a sunny south window.
That second month they budded… developed shoots and leave… even fruit… looked very promising for a few weeks… but then they started to fade, shriveled… died…
I inspected each failed cutting and found not one single root.
I have had good success grafting gerardi.
TNHunter
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As others have stated, there is a big variance on the variety that you are trying to root. The longest I’ve tried was 5 months on this King Shahtoot. I gave up but wanted to see if there were any results and it does seem like a hair of a root formedl. That’s when I realized I should up my grafting game lol.
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I put about 20 nigra cuttings into the ground at the end of February. They looked fine and some budded in May. Then came the slugs and heat so I dug out what was not cooked (literally) and moved them into pots at the end of June. It was a slow death…
This was the most promissing one before the move.
I’ve got a bunch of seedlings for grafting and may give the cuttings another shot when the tree drops leaves and see how they do over winter.
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so you’re growing out new varieties from seed? (or am I misunderstanding what you meant)
Yes, although there is little chance of seeing much variation in fruit quality, though there may be some in leaf shape. Morus nigra (black mulberry) from seed - #96 by Tana
But also I want to use some of the seedlings as rootstock to graft scions from some of the ancient trees that grow in my area. Some are purely female (my trees are not), some have larger fruit and I want a scion from the tree that caused a mess with the infamous M.nigra var trnavica.
uh oh, all the little sticks are budding out already with green buds, but of course no roots have formed yet as it’s only been 5-6 days… should I be concerned or just let it go?
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I’d just let them go for a bit, its only been a short time. Jans Best roots pretty easily as well so hopefully you’ll at least have that one take.
As long as they are under some kind of humidity protection (looks like cling wrap?) it should be ok if they start to bud out too soon. Hopefully the growth stalls right away and can start photosynthesizing to rebuild the energy needed for roots to form. I had good luck with some mulberries that did that (Galicia, for example), but others (nigras mostly) all failed eventually.
two week update!
I used tweezers to pick off the little mulberries that were growing
also note that three of the cuttings in the plastic bin are not mulberry (two are Cherry Cordial Fig, and one is a type of cherry that Jan also sold on FigBid)
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if you fail at rooting that way you can try again with bread bags from walmart etc… they make nice little rooting bags/humidity domes/figpops… and use sterile(ish) medium for rooting. I use garlic myself for rooting things but YMMV.
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After my spring grafting I’ve noticed this 2024 Spring Grafting Thread - #681 by Tana happening and then my nigra cuttings literally cooked in the ground. And I had an idea to try and see if I could get that root-like callusing on a nigra and then try to root or air-layer it.
In early July I made diagonal cuts into some pencil-sized branches and wrapped them up in self galvanising rubber tape. . When I checked them in August, they all callused neatly, but I found an extra one today as the tree has almost defoliated. It had a lumpy callus.
I’ve air-layered it but I don’t know if it would last outside even if it roots before frosts. (No idea when that is happening this year)
Should I snip it off and put in wet perlite indoors?
I am repeating the experiment next spring before budding.
@PcChip … I tried rooting Gerardi a few years back…
One month on bottom heat with no light exposure… then another month in a sunny south window.
Once getting sun… they budded, sent out shoots and leaves and fruit… like yours above… but a few weeks later they started to decline… turned brown, died.
This was after two months of rooting time…
I checked each cutting and there was not one tiny root on any of them.
It is amazing how much growth they can put out from the scion only.
Gerardi is a tough one to root… but I grafted it successfully.
Good Luck to you !!!
TNHunter
a bunch of them didn’t take, but I think I’m going to end up with about 8 mulberries that will actually grow into trees! I guess that’s about 50% success rate with the mulberry cuttings, and 0% success rate with whatever those cherry cuttings I got from her were. Not sure if I will try again on those, but I’m super excited to hopefully get some mulberries in the future!
pic from one week ago:
pics from just now (pardon the rubus in the background):
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Nice that you got some to root. Any feedback on the methods? As in which ones were better or worse?
I rooted 50 or so Jan’s Bests and got like 90% success rate just leaving them outside in 4 cell containers. Of the 10% that did not have green growth, they did grow roots and develop callous so maybe they might have made it.