Mulberry, pros and cons.
A year ago, they brought me a gift from the south, a jar of mulberry jam, which turned out to be unusual and tasty. And this year (2017) I was surprised to learn that my neighbors have a mulberry tree. And this is Khabarovsk, where -45 in winter is not uncommon but the norm. Now I want to plant one for myself, I just have to figure out the pros and cons. The biggest disadvantage, I think, is that more than half of the harvest will be eaten by sparrows...
The biggest disadvantage of mulberry is that you can never expect a harvest from it. Mine has been in the same pore for 5 years now. It doesn’t really grow, it throws out its leaves later than everyone else, I say goodbye to it every year, but by mid-June the tree somehow becomes obsolete. The berries are still an eternity away, although I would agree to give half of them to the sparrows, if only they would grow. I really love it.
And it seems that I have two mulberries! I cut a couple of branches from that tree, and in due time they took root, and young branches came out of the buds! One of these days I will plant it in the garden. And as for the fact that yours doesn’t bear fruit, maybe it doesn’t have enough pollinator?
The tree, therefore, cannot be propagated; it was necessary to graft branches onto a rootstock that has roots. With rooted branches, nothing will work. Even if they grow, they will freeze in winter.
Well, I did it as they say on most sites and forums, and there they root the cuttings at the end of July and plant them for schooling for a year. I don’t argue that the risk of freezing is high, but no one forbids trying to grow it this way. I'll write about the results in a year.
Best of all, mulberry cuttings take root when they are semi-lignified and caring for them is much easier than green cuttings. It is better not to take lignified cuttings at all, because they have the lowest percentage of rooting.
Well, in a month and a half, my rooted cuttings gave very good growth, I buried one in the ground, I’ll make a shelter for the winter. The rest will overwinter in the cellar, I’ll bury them there closer to the ventilation, where the soil is close to freezing. In the spring I’ll write about how we spent the winter.
What does your currant have to do with it if the topic is about a completely different berry? Or did you just decide to insert an advertising link? There was a mistake, they poked it in the wrong place. I don’t like currants at all, so I won’t even look at your catalogue.
If mulberries are grown from cuttings in the first few years, then in the future the tree will not freeze. In general, few people grow mulberry in our city; if they plant it, it is in the front garden, or on the street, near the fence.
I have always seen mulberries that are vigorous, with a large, spreading crown. In our city, there are two types of mulberry growing - red and white. I like the red one better; if it is not quite ripe, it has a pleasant sourness, while the white one is more bland.
In our neighborhood, a tree is about 3 meters high, the branches are long, thin, flexible, hanging like a hut down to the ground. We have some kind of Chinese mulberry, with black fruits, very sweet. It's a shame they have no scent.