Thanks. So getting a dwarfing style mulberry coincidentally gives me a good choice for this far south as we often get fruit trees blooming in February…so the occasional year with late freezes may miss the Gerardi.
PS…I’ve never eaten a mulberry…or even seen one in person.
Gerardi dwarf mulberry grows and produces great here in Southern middle Tennessee.
Also known to grow well and produce well in northern Georgia (strudledog on youtube).
Some in cooler climates say it grows slow for then.
Here I grafted it and it grew 8 shoots… some grew 6 ft the first season.
Year 1 dont expext much from the fruit… it may be quite bland… but mine did produce fruit year 1.
Year 2… the fruit improved much… sweet (but no tart) and nice mild fruity flavor.
Year 3… very nice fruit improvement… sweet and tart and more complex fruity flavor… as good as any blackberry I ever had.
Year 4 coming up.
TNHunter
I should mention that those cuttings did not survive.
That is vigorous growth. Could be from fertilizer of rootsrtock.
Flavor changes when they ripen. I prefer them with small amount of red before fully black.
@danzeb … I grafted gerardi to a 3 inch diameter white mulberry stump.
Late summer it looked like that.
Now I prune it once late winter back down to 8 ft max.
TNHunter
Anybody growing Gerardi successfully in 9a?
It’s way too early to say successfully for me.
9a southeastern Louisiana.
I grafted Gerardi last spring. Got fruit this year, but the tree is currently only two 2-foot tall branches. It does look healthy though.
I’ll clean up around the tree to pull back the grass (competition) and apply some nutrients to get it actively growing again.
Thanks-- that’s very encouraging! Hopefully, I’ll be able to find a scion and graft it onto my Dwarf everbearing next spring.
Ask someone here who has a more mature tree. If I get good growth this summer, I could give you a stick but as it looks now i won’t be able to.
Thanks, I hope yours does well this summer. I’ll check around and see if I can find a source.
