mulberry – Not a Horticulturist

Short version:

Mulberries are worth growing as they are one of the things that you can’t get in shops. They are less fussy about soil than raspberries and blueberries. They don’t need pruning the way blackberries and raspberries do. They taste like a cross between a grape and blackberry, but without the pips. The leaves can also be edible (but see warning at the end).

Mulberries are something that you either have to grow yourself or forage for. You’ll be hard pressed to find fresh mulberries in the shops. Ripe mulberries make a squidgy mess easily so they would never be suitable for transit or storage. Even underripe mulberries come apart easily.

I only have a limited experience with growing mulberries as I’ve only had my bushes for just over 2 years and both are a dwarf variety called Charlotte Russe, bought from the Suttons website. I have sadly read that this variety, despite winning awards, isn’t particularly great tasting. The best tasting ones must be amazing then. I like the ones we have anyway, and they’ve received the seal of approval from my little fussy eater.

Mulberries come in red, white and black. We have the black ones (M. nigra). The black mulberries are supposed to taste the best and are they are the hardiest. The white mulberries are the ones that are often dried. The leaves of the white mulberry are those that silk worms eat and are apparently smoother and easier to eat than those of the black or red. Oh yes, the leaves are edible. However, I have ready that some varieties can cause stomach upset, so maybe test with a small quantity first.

How to grow

Mulberries are a great berry to grow as they requires less attention than most of the other berries. Raspberries and blueberries need ericaceous soil. Mulberries are tolerant of soil type. They do like deep fertile soil that retains moisture and drains well though. They like full sun, but can tolerate light shade.

The large tree in Birmingham Botanical Gardens

Raspberries and blackberries grow on 2 year old canes so you need to allow the canes to grow in the first year without letting them shade out the fruiting canes. Then the canes that have fruited need to be pruned after harvest has finished. With mulberries you can just let them grow. Pruning is only required to keep its shape or to remove dead or diseased wood.

A typical tree can get very large, so if you have a small garden like we do then I would suggest a dwarf variety. The Charlotte Russe is a good one as it fruits after a year, unlike full size mulberries which can take around 8 years after planting before producing fruit. The dwarf ones do well in pots. They arrived in April 2018 and by June 2018 their branches had grown a little already. In early 2019 we repotted, one into a larger pot and one into a much larger old water tank. That year we had our first taste of mulberries. There wasn’t much difference in the size of harvest of the 2 pots. There were about 20-30 fruit on each. This year you can see a clear difference in the size of the plant and there are more fruit on the bush in the larger water tank.

The branches of mulberries can be a little delicate so some protection from strong winds will be beneficial. However, mulberries can be late frost tolerant. This year the young leaves had started to form (it is deciduous) when a couple of cold nights hit. The developed young leaved did die back, but then it had new growth and recovered fine. When a similar thing happened to our one of our grapes, the whole vine died.

About a third of this growth died, but it recovered

Mulberries, as far as I can tell are wind pollinated.

How to harvest

The ripe berries come off the branches easily with a little stalk attached. This stalk is also edible. If it is underripe it won’t come away easily. However, if left too long the berries become dull and dried.

All the ones on the bigger bush she couldn’t reach.

What actually happens in this house is little one goes into the garden and picks fruit straight off the tree and eats it. Our dwarf bush produces plenty of berries within an infant’s reach. She struggles a little with the larger bush. With lockdown she has been out there every day grazing. There isn’t a huge glut of berries produced at once. It’s hard to tell with the little marauder, but I think there have been about half a dozen ripe mulberries (between the 2 bushes) a day since the beginning of June. This was about 3 weeks earlier than last year and may be due to the early hot weather. There are still plenty of unripe berries, and even a few flowers, on the bush so I guestimate that they will continue to produce for another couple of weeks at least.

There are hundred of clusters like these on the park bush

There is a red mulberry bush in a local park. I have only noticed the ripe fruit on it this week and there are hundreds of unripe berries, but it’s hard to know about fruit in public spaces. I may not have seen any ripe berries yet because there may be someone removing them before I spy them.

I have read that if you have a very large tree then an easy way to harvest is to spread a large sheet underneath it and shake down the ripe ones to collect in the cloth.

How they taste

I’m afraid I can’t account for how all mulberries taste. This is part of the joy of growing them. I have never been able to find fresh mulberries elsewhere. The first mulberries I had seen were on a mulberry tree in the Botanical gardens in Birmingham, but they weren’t ripe at the time.

Our Charlotte Russe variety tastes like a bit like a grape crossed with a blackberry, but without the blackberry pips. There is a definite mild mulberry taste that I’ve also tasted with dried white mulberries. The dried mulberries are sweeter and remind me of raisins crossed with that mulberry taste.

The red mulberries in the park are almost twice the size of ours and taste a little less sweet than our black ones, but have a stronger flavour.

It’s like all fruit. There can be variation within varieties.

The leaves from our black mulberry, when stir fried in a little oil with a pinch of salt, remind me of dried, crispy seaweed. Not the fake seaweed made of cabbage, but the seasoned stuff that is like the nori used in sushi. I wouldn’t eat this as a bulk vegetable, maybe more as a snack or pretty side dish. I also don’t like to eat many of the leaves as I think this would affect berry production. The leaves are a bit tough. I’d like to try white mulberries leaves one day to see how they compare. They are, however, one of the few edible leaves in the garden in the hungry gap that aren’t brassicas. Pick the youngish leaves, but leave the shooting ends alone.

The younger glossier leaves, getting duller as you look right

Warning

I have read that the milky white sap can be mildly toxic to humans, causing stomach upsets or skin irritations. I think the effects vary wildly for different cultivars. Little one plays with our tree constantly and has not had any problems. We have also eaten the leaves with no concerns.

Short version:

The winter is a great time to plant perennial cheaper ‘bare root’ fruit trees. Planting 2 of each type of fruit can help increase yields. With the new hardier and more disease resistant varieties out there, we are no longer restricted to the usual apple, pear, cherry and plum trees that the generations before us were. There are now figs, grapes, peaches and mulberries that can be grown outdoors. For the adventurous there are also kiwi, passion fruit and certain types of guavas. Also don’t forget the berry bushes, like blueberry and raspberry, which also come much cheaper as bare root.

When the trees are dormant, they are sold more cheaply as bare root. This means that storing and transport is cheaper so winter is a great time to populate the garden with fruit trees. Fruit trees are perennial. You can plant them once and keep harvesting off them during their lifespan. Keep in mind though, that they can take several years to begin bearing fruit. These are for the long game.

Most fruit trees suitable for the garden starts with a dwarfing root stock. This is basically the lower half of the tree – the roots and the trunk. This rootstock determines the eventual height of the tree, which will be somewhere between 1m to 4m depending on how dwarfing the rootstock is. The rootstock may also provide better disease resistance, hardiness or sturdiness.

This is where the branch has been grafted on. When I received the tree (via post) the graft had come away. Luckily after I tied it back together the branch survived.

Another reason for a rootstock is that you can’t grow a fruit variety from seed. For example, all Granny Smith apple trees are clones of the original Granny Smith. Basically, someone somewhere discovered or bred this variety with a taste they like. They then named it (and probably patented it too). From then onwards if you want to have a tree that grows apples that taste like Granny Smiths you get a branch from a Granny Smith and graft it onto your rootstock. It probably won’t be the original tree but a clone of the original, which is basically the same thing. You can read more about why seeds don’t always produce plants that are the same variety as the parents in ‘Pollination, fertilisation and variation’

And…. Another fab thing about grafting is that you get fruit sooner as you are not growing from seed. And… wouldn’t you know there’s even more to love. One of the great things about grafting fruit trees is that you can get a single tree with more than one variety on it.

This fab apple tree round the corner from us has 2 different varieties of apple growing on it. Even the leaves are a slightly different shade. There are plenty of very green/yellow apples on the right, but if you look carefully, you can see the red/yellow ones on the left.

I absolutely love my fruit trees. I have an apple, a pear and a cherry tree. Each one of these have 5 varieties grafted onto them. Yup! That’s not a typo. Each tree has 5 varieties. This may not turn out to be such a great thing in the long run, but I love the novelty of it. I was amazed to find these trees, and then even more amazed to find that they have survived and have grown well. Even more important than the novelty of more than one variety on a fruit tree, is that with fruit, a pollination partner is important. Some trees won’t pollinate themselves. This also includes 2 different trees of the same variety as they will be clones. You’ll have some varieties (self-sterile) that won’t grow any fruit if there isn’t another tree of the same species but of different variety nearby. I.e. it has to be the same type (apple with apple, pear with pear) of fruit, but cannot be the same variety. There is then an added complication of apple trees that open their flowers at different times. This means that there are specific pollination partners within pollination groups. There are some varieties that are self fertile (they can pollinate themselves), but these will bear more fruit when there is a pollination partner.

Apples and pears don’t tend to have problems, especially in high population, suburban areas, as often there are other people in the local area with an apple or pear. If you do find a tree with a couple of varieties grafted onto the same trunk, they are often pollination partners.

Cherry tree. You can only see 2 varieties here.

I didn’t buy these as bare root though. I was doing up the garden in the early summer and was far too impatient. The first summer in the garden there was no fruit as expected as they had only been in there about 2 months or so. The second year (only really 14/15months) the apple had a couple of fruit that dropped before they were ripe, the pear produced 2 varieties and the cherry produced 3 varieties. The following year we managed to get 4 varieties of apple, 2 varieties of pear (though weirdly, it was 2 different varieties to the previous year) and 3 varieties of cherry (I’m not sure if it was the same 3 varieties as the previous year). With different varieties you need to be careful to ensure via pruning that one variety doesn’t become too dominant. Another drawback of the many varieties on one tree is that if a tree dies, then you are losing all of your different varieties.

This is where I bought these trees:

https://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/multi-variety-fruit-tree-apple-5-varieties-on-one-tree

https://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/multi-variety-fruit-tree-pear-5-varieties-on-one-tree

https://www.gardeningexpress.co.uk/multi-variety-fruit-tree-cherry-5-varieties-on-one-tree

Because it is unusual to have that many varieties on one tree there are more limited options for buying. These are pot grown and according to the website, no other nurseries do that many varieties so your only choice is the pot grown. These ones are also on very dwarfing rootstock and so the trees are only expected to grow to 6-8ft.

If you’d rather not have the expense of pot grown, you can still get a bare rooted twin tree. Here is a website, but I’ve not bought any fruit trees from here. These ones here are on less dwarfing rootstock:

https://www.marshalls-seeds.co.uk/twin-fruit-trees-cid292.html

The biggest problem with city gardens and fruit trees is the lack of space. You can do things like fan train, espalier or just tie and prune to ensure that your tree doesn’t take up too much of your garden. You can use a tree to make a living fence or screen.

The following photos were taken on a visit to The Lost Gardens of Heligan:

This espalier pear forms an effective screen. It also allows for better air circulation and the branches don’t shade each other.

Unfortunately we don’t have space for a tunnel like this. Instead we have:

Seedless dessert grapes being trained over a pergola to provide shade over this bench.

In addition to the common English garden varieties, there are now more options. There are more hardy and disease resistant varieties that can now be grown. It is not necessary to have a green house as there are hardy varieties of things like figs, grapes, kiwis, passionfruit, and mulberries that grow in our garden. We don’t have a peach or medlar tree but I have heard that these are possible too. When you select a tree make sure you check details on how they taste, pollination partners, how hardy it is and if that variety is known to fruit in your climate. It’s a long list but there’s no point growing a fruit tree that survives the winter if the fruit doesn’t ripen in your climes, or if the fruit does ripen but tastes pants. Slightly less important, but still worth considering, is what is the final height of the tree and also how long it takes before it begins to produce fruit.

Our fig had 2 ripe fruit in the first year, nothing at all the second and 6 figs that didn’t ripen this year.

There are also plenty of berry bushes that do brilliantly in the UK. Our blueberries, raspberries, Chilean guava, blackberries, gooseberries and physallis seem to thrive. I’ve also seen goji berries at my parents and blackcurrants in some random nearby garden doing brilliantly.

Tag: mulberry

Mulberries (Morus)

Fruit trees