Picking mulberries does not go any faster than picking blueberries…It is just that most of my mulberries are many times bigger than blueberries.
Yeah…Shaking goes faster than picking, but unripe mulberries shake loose also and then you have to sort through them, and with my mulberry “trees” shaking is easier. Many of my trees are just starting to ripen, but finished are my ‘World’s Best’, ‘Chiang Mai #60’, and ‘Issai’, and they are easily reachable “bushes” that pick well (They are firm mulberries that don’t squish easily).
I’ve seen a vid. where they use a kiddie pool cut in half put under them to collect the fruit. much quicker as the half is just tipped up and the berries are poured out. pretty slick!
Yes I saw that too! I use a tarp like mulberries. The only mulberry tree I harvest regular is a wild, and the unripe berries rarely fall, that might be cultivar specific. Way too soft to pick very fast. So the tarp method is perfect. Plus it is a wild and some are 40 feet tall, your only option is shaking! I won’t let my trees get taller than 7 feet.
maybe once my northrop and illni. everbearing start to produce fruit i too will have “wild” mulberries establishing in the area. with the help of the birds.
No wild currants at my cottage and I planted a few reds and whites, well in the woods around my woods edge garden are currant plants, they are all over. Soon the whole island will have currants! I’m planting three blacks this year.
@Hillbillyhort @chriso @ammoun
We mixed our harvest so it is either Sweet Crisp or Big White, both white varieties Jim Nietzel (founder of Big Jim) developed, they are equally delicious!
‘Silk Hope’ with ‘Illinois’ a close second…I also have a Red Mulberry that is really good. Morus nigra ‘Persian’ could be my favorite if it grew well here, but so far it has only produced minuscule amounts of fruit (and the birds get most).
‘World’s Best’ has decent flavor, with none of the off-flavors that some mulberries have, but it lacks in intensity of flavor, perhaps because it produces so heavy a crop (The less prolific fall crop is a little more flavorful). But, as I have stated in an other post, the only time you notice much of a difference in mulberry fruit taste is when eating fresh…When used in recipes or wine making I can’t say I notice much of a difference. And since my ‘World’s Best’ bush produced over 70 pounds this spring, only a small fraction of the fruit was eaten fresh. ‘Shangri La’ is sweeter but not more flavorful, and since it is sweeter it draws the stink bugs to it like a magnet…I’ll admit that I am squeamish, but I won’t touch a mulberry fruit when I find a stink bug on it. I only found a couple stink bugs on the ‘World’s Best’ this year.
Mulberry certainly gives me the most reward relative to effort (I didn’t even plant them! Birds did it for me!)
But my favorite is the weird experimental multigraft tree with different species on it that probably shouldn’t work at all. Right now, that’s a hawthorn tree that’s slowly being converted to Medlar, but also has some pear branches and may even give me some apples this year. I really like grafting, repurposing what’s already growing, and pushing the boundaries of what should be possible. I check on the status of that tree every day.
i have a 6ft. mountain ash growing out of a old spruce stump near the road. i just ordered some pear scions to graft to it. mountain ash is so vigorous here, it should produce well once established.
Shouldn’t it be called Bryce’s Best if it’s not as flavorful as others? It still seems like something I’d like to have. How big is the “bush” you harvested 70 pounds from?
I’m still waiting for Bryce’s email so that I can buy one. He said to expect it at the “end of April”.
Perhaps…But when I first met Bryce he had no intention of ever selling it (That part is my fault…I kept pushing him to sell it), but he called it ‘World’s Best’ because it had desirable characteristics (I hope I’m stating him correctly): 1) It stays small as a bush (15 feet) and will never become a tree. 2) It produces abundantly in the spring, and can be enticed into producing multiple smaller crops throughout the year by pruning heavily. 3) It’s fruit are quite large with a pleasant flavor 4) It propagates easily by cuttings.
He had six or so varieties of mulberry plants and he liked his ‘World’s Best’ the best…The name just stuck…and now he regrets it, because people assume it is because it tastes the best, but that was never his claim.
My bush is about 12 feet…but the branches bend all the way to the ground when the berries load up.
I would say Blackberries are my most rewarding. I have two trellised out and with little to no effort have enough blackberries to feed a small army. I simply suppress the canes that sprout up by snipping them off until about June and then take the canes that sprout after the fruit is gone from current canes and trellis them out while getting rid of last years canes. Takes about 30 mins sometime in August to get it ready for next year. I have Osage ( thornless) and Kiowa (vicious thorns).
