I’m looking for some advice on how to handle my Weeping Mulberry. It has pushed healthy new growth along the lower half of the main trunk but nothing in the upper part. A scratch test below the top branch shows green, while another above the top branch did not show any green.
I am considering cutting the upper trunk just above that highest living branch, and taking the same branch to train it upward to act as a new leader.
Has anyone tried this with a weeper? Will it work to restore the height and shape, or is there a better approach to take?
Any advice or experiences will be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
@MFJFIGS I have been playing around with some potted weeping mulberry for a couple years now. Mine all started out as rooted cuttings. That is all that I have done is just tie the shoot to a stake to keep it growing up. I haven’t been totally successful though, I can get a nice straight stem up about 3 feet over a summer, come spring most of it is winter killed, and then I start back over at 6- 10 inches tall. This fall I’m going to move them into the garage for the winter.
I thought weeping mulberries were typically grafted to a standard rootstock. I’m guessing you now have an alba rootstock. However, this one appears to be trained up a pole, so maybe it can be retrained from lower shoots.
@kiwinut I think you are right, most of your nursery bought weeping mulberry are probably grafted to a “non-weeping” trunk.
I got my cutting from a very old tree on a dairy farm. The tree had a 24 inch diameter trunk and only 15 feet tall, most of the main branches were very contorted, there wasn’t a straight trunk on it like you see on modern weeping trees. I honestly doubt that tree my cutting came from was grafted.
This was likely caused by a combination of its young age, having been purchased and planted in April 2025, and a colder than average winter here in Massachusetts, Z6a.
Cutting back to the highest live branch and training a new leader from there sounds like the right call. Young trees can take a while to settle in and a cold first winter doesn’t help. Worth the patience if the rootstock is solid.
Being an M.alba, I suspect that cuttings could probably be rooted with decent success rates, but you’d have to stake/support it to whatever height you wanted it to weep from.
Many years ago, I purchased a ‘Teas Weeping’ mulberry from Edible Landscaping… it was grafted onto a M.alba rootstock, about 2 inches above the soil line. I had to stake it to the height I wanted it to weep from, otherwise, it would have run along the ground like a vine.
That said, most that I’ve seen in the urban landscape have been topworked onto a ‘standard’, at 4-6 ft.
i got 1 from esty last spring. they said it was at least z5 hardy. grew very quickly to 6ft. well they were right and i got winter kill the same as you at about 36in. sending out lots of new growth..
