2021 Seed Orders

[thistlebloom]

An acquaintance has one and the mulberries are delicious! Apparently they do well here in Alameda. I've been thinking of getting one but no where to put it.

Mary

You can plant one here! Go ahead, plant two or three, I have tons of room!

 

[Artichoke Lover]

I’m adding Mulberries this year! I love the taste. I’ll be taking cuttings from my grandfathers tree in a month or two.

 

[Zeedman]

I got my order in to Territorial yesterday and expect it to arrive in two weeks. I showed some amazing self discipline, only ordering what I know we will use and will actually grow well here.
I did get a little distracted by the dwarf mulberry trees... I would have ordered two but they were out of stock. That led me to hunting them down and I found some available at a Tennessee nursery, but at checkout they apologized that they won't ship live plants this far due to the delays in transit. Just as well.
Maybe I'll look for them locally.

Perhaps just as well you didn't order the ones from Tennessee. Some mulberries are more - or less - cold tolerant than others; you might get one of the "less" from a Southern grower. I wish I could grow the mulberries here that my BIL has in Kansas; they are like 2" long blackberries, and just as delicious. There are a lot of mulberries here, mostly wild (including all males in my yard) but none with berries over about 3/4". Mulberries are fairly tolerant of wet soils though, and make semi-decent fire wood, so I may plant some in my tree line to replace the dying ash trees.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I planted an Illinois Everbearing Mulberry when I was in Arkansas. I can't remember how long it took it to start producing but it wasn't that long. For about 6 weeks each summer it produced a lot of mulberries. It did grow pretty tall, I had to prune it severely so I could reach it with a ladder and to thin it out. It was in my chicken run, every morning when I let them out during those 6 weeks the first thing they did was run over to see what fell overnight.

Mulberries were one of my favorites. I loved eating them fresh from the tree and made some great jelly from them. I'd harvest them by spreading sheets on the ground and shaking the limbs. They needed to be harvested every two or three days.

The are messy. They were not firm at all, really soft and squishy. The purple stained really badly too. Anything they touched was stained purple. One warning I read was that a wild bird would eat them and then stain your sidewalk or cart if they perched over them and pooped. I did not experience that but that mulberry tree was a couple of hundred feet away from the house. There are a lot of different varieties, both growth habit and colors of berries. The Illinois Everbearing is the only one I have any experience with.

 

[seedcorn]

Glad to hear I’m not the only one who likes mulberries. My problem is the birds eat them before I get to them. Then they splatter my truck.

 

[thistlebloom]

Perhaps just as well you didn't order the ones from Tennessee. Some mulberries are more - or less - cold tolerant than others; you might get one of the "less" from a Southern grower. I wish I could grow the mulberries here that my BIL has in Kansas; they are like 2" long blackberries, and just as delicious. There are a lot of mulberries here, mostly wild (including all males in my yard) but none with berries over about 3/4". Mulberries are fairly tolerant of wet soils though, and make semi-decent fire wood, so I may plant some in my tree line to replace the dying ash trees.

These were supposed to be good to zone 5. The draw for me was their size, really a shrub more than a tree according to some reviews. Growing to about 6', but some people keep them shorter with pruning. And good in large containers too.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

We have a mulberry on probation one our back patio. I say "on probation" because we aren't sure what to do with it. Generally, mulberries that grow here are nasty weed trees that produce fruit of no use to humans (but which is GREAT for birds to gorge out on and then drop purple s**t on your car*

But just before I yanked this one up, I remembered that, the previous year, I had thrown a package of dried white Turkish mulberries of the eating kind out there. So the tree is now in a pot while I work out if it is worth sticking it in the ground and seeing if it makes edible fruit.

This is complicated by the fact that 1. space is at a premium, so whether to put a tree in is always a weighty matter. and 2. Given how long it takes a tree to grow, there would be some doubt as to whether it would bear fruit within the time I am likely to still be living here.

*somehow this even happens when the tree in question makes white fruit.

 

[Zeedman]

But just before I yanked this one up, I remembered that, the previous year, I had thrown a package of dried white Turkish mulberries of the eating kind out there. So the tree is now in a pot while I work out if it is worth sticking it in the ground and seeing if it makes edible fruit.

In my youth, I used to pass by a yard that had white mulberries, with just a light purple blush. They were exceptionally sweet. A few years later, the house was sold, and the new owners cut that tree down. I've never seen a white mulberry anywhere in this area since then. It may have been a mutation, since it was apparently growing wild in a fence line, where bird-spread mulberries often emerge. I'll be cruising around this year, looking for an exceptional female mulberry tree to take cuttings from. The sad part is that DD#2 had a heavily-fruiting tree in her back yard, and cut it down because the berries were staining her son's clothes. Apparently, he really liked mulberries.

 

[ninnymary]

You can plant one here! Go ahead, plant two or three, I have tons of room!

If I do will you send me some mulberries? haha

Mary

 

[thistlebloom]

If I do will you send me some mulberries? haha

Mary

Of course! You can even come pick your own.