How Mulberries Build Resilience in my Food Forest System (& Why They Aren't for Everyone!)
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- Опубліковано 18 лип 2022
- Mulberries can be a wonderful addition to a food forest, homestead, or fruit orchard. They produce large crops of sweet, delicious berries, year after year. But they can also be a bit of a pain.
Here's a look at my Illinois Everbearing Mulberry, the pluses and minuses of putting a mulberry in your garden, and tips for harvesting.
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I had a mulberry tree in the yard when I was younger. And someone commented one time how messy their mulberry tree was. I didn’t have that problem. Then one day I saw my lab snarfing thru the grass eating all the dropped berries. He was a good dog 🐕
Mulberries made a big impression on me in a weird way.
I was on a run through a park in Brooklyn and I saw this huge tree covered in probably hundreds of pounds of food and it was delicious and amazingly productive. It got me looking into food forests and eventually permaculture from there.
Now I’m in my own home in PA and was shocked to find that this amazing food tree is hard to find. Explanation by most: “too messy.”
Oh I’m sorry is all that abundant free food too “messy” for you?!
Anyway I found a native landscaping guy and now I have 3 mulberry trees 😊
Thankful that where I am from it is very easy to buy at most places!
Wonderful journey u made me happy lol
Mines right over my nonoperating vehicles and its super messy but thats my fault not the mulberries'.
Prune them hard. I try to keep my mulberries to 3m tall 10ft. They fruit better if pruned hard and the timber burns fast like pine wood. The fresh leaves steeped in water for a tea are good for the lungs. They are also silk worm food if you want to go into silk production.
The thing I'm wondering about, WRT harvesting, why does it matter if you can't reach, and thus harvest, ALL the fruit?
So long as it's planted in a spot where the mess doesn't matter, I say, if I can't reach them, the birds are welcome to them!
We grabbed a couple local mulberries and planted the seeds so we can have some locally adapted mulberry trees on our new property and the number of people commenting about, you'll never be able to pick all the berries, it will be wasted food etc... I can not be alone in the idea that fair share and share the harvest can apply to wildlife as well? We are planning on to plant them well away to avoid the mess of stepped on berries, other than that, I am happy to harvest my fill and leave the rest to what ever else wants some, we have 6 acres and I view having things like that as a way to increase our biodiversity for relatively little effort on our part.
I feel you. I grow mulberries too...... for people, my chickens and any other animal that wants some. We got to share and live together.
Same here!
We have multiple Mulberry trees in our area, all planted by wildlife!
And there's a grandmother Mulberry tree here too!
It must be 2 feet in diameter!
There's NO WAY to harvest all its fruit!
Why is the first inclination for some humans to consume EVERY BIT OF THE SURROUNDING NATURE ???
I dunno...
But the squirrels, birds, and all the rest of the local fauna are plentiful over here.
I bet those all consuming humans wouldn't even notice the drop in fauna until it was all gone.
And then they would sit there wondering why that happened.
...smh...
@@Karin000 if we live in a permaculure society with each other we would be awesomesauce...
I think same I let my fruit trees grow bigger then I can harvest to and people go what's waste you can't reach them. And I always say gotta leave some for the birds.
It’s so funny to me that anyone would taunt you with that comment. In nature it would be the same, right? Wildlife gets most of it and if you’re lucky you get to share a bit of their bounty.
I put tarps under my tree just before the fruit ripens. Shake any branches I can reach which usually drops fruit from nearby branches too. Leave the tarps until the fruit is gone. Love making mulberry jam and freezing them to add to smoothies.
Mulberries really take off! I bought a twig sized plant about 5 years ago at a county extension sale, and it's about 10 feet tall. I cut it way back the last two years. Their vigor is no joke!
The tree has attracted cat birds and Orioles to our yard. I love the berries, and the wildlife it has attracted.
My husband loves the tree so much... we planted a second. More pruning, but more biomass and this one will block out the view of our neighbors. We politely planted it in a place that won't hang over the fence. They wouldn't appreciate berries on their concrete pool deck...
😂 awesome!
I love my mulberry tree- our turkeys and the deer love them too. The staining is wonderful on my lips! It’s an old tree
As a kid there was an early 20th century farm house across from our grade school with an old woman living there that had a huge mulberry tree that she let us climb and pick all the berries we could eat and more. Wonderful pies were ours filling up baskets and were a mess with mulberry fights
Mulberries are related to figs, yes.
Also, if anyone is concerned about Illinois Everbearing mulberry fruit stains, try growing "Pakistan King White Mulberry" also called " Shahtoot" and there will be no stains & as bonus the fruit is about 2.5" to 3" long and much sweeter. I used to have it in our backyard in USA but could not get "Pakistan King White Mulberry" in Canada when I moved here and could not find a USA nursery that will ship to Canada. My young children used to love the big white mulberries.
It's very Zen relaxing to pick mulberries. I've been making a batch of jelly with them. I add some other fruit to round out the flavor. Wild grape is my favorite. I recently learned the leaves are good to eat. Like fresh spinach. They recommended cooking the smallest, most tender. Lots of protein as well.
More and more, I've noticed that fruits growers in the USA do not, or cannot climb trees.
I climbed every mulberry trees that i came across in parks and forests when its summer time in New York.
I've been actively seeking out these wonderful fruits since i discovered them in 2009.
Coming from the Caribbean, no tall trees has ever prevented me from getting the fruits that i desire.
I really love mulberries, they are to me the best thing about summertime in New York, and people don't usually eat them anyway, so i have them all to myself.
@@Ni-dk7ni well I did have my fair share of falling out of trees as a child growing up.
Those lessons thought me how not to fall out of trees, now I don't fall out of trees.
I'm 50 now and I still climbed trees.
I've lived in New York for 16 years but I'm originally from a tropical island.
Curious how most of you clean the berries - I have always seen tiny white bugs in the berries that you can't see unless you look really close. So I soak them in apple cider vinegar and salt water for about 10-15 minutes and lift them out of the water (vs draining, so that the gunk stays in the sink and not washed back over the berries). Seems they keep better in the fridge that way too.
A good problem to have - too much mulberry - you might need a mini-goat to feed those branches too! suggest try mashed purple mulberries in your bread dough. if you rub your stained hands with green/ unripe mulberries, it will come off
Seems like you could reinforce the chicken coop to be able to hold a person's weight and attach a ladder to the side of it - pick the higher branches from the top of the coop.
Mulberries are so excellent for making jelly and jam. Also, they make delicious fruit leather. Yes, it does stain like crazy, I was doing my 'grounding' walking around barefoot while picking berries from the tree, I won't do that again! It took about a week to scrub the stains off of my feet. I read somewhere that they have a higher level of protein than most fruit, so there is that as well. I am quite happy to just pick the fruit I can reach and leave the rest to my feathered friends.
Live next to Hanes Park in Winston Salem - found a bunch of these trees that almost NOBODY paid any attention to - literal pounds of fruit get trampled underfoot seasonally.
Went out with a friend and returned with a couple kilo's of the stuff - lived off them for a couple days. My favorite berry of all time - thanks for the education!
I was so excited last year to find two mulberries at our local big orange box store. They were so expensive but they were 8 to10 feet tall and covered in berries already. Planted them and enjoyed mulberries in my granola and yogurt for breakfast or some kind of snack every day all summer. It was fantastic! I was almost having withdrawals over the winter time. L O L when I planted them, I took the lower limbs off so that they would not be close to the ground and just on a whim cut them into pieces and stuck them in soil. Amazingly, I now have eight more mulberry trees. They are small, but they overwintered well and are doing great this spring! Not sure where I’m going to plant eight of them… What an awesome problem to have! Thanks for the video. Nobody seems to talk about mulberries, but they are most excellent!
Picking and processing harvest has always been a dreaded task for me but I'd rather have the problem of excess food than scarce. I remember to say thank-you prayers to Mother Earth and Prime Creator for providing us with abundance and beauty. I also invite neighbors that appreciate home-grown food to come harvest. It's great to share nature's bounty.
“Here we go round the mulberry bush, The mulberry bush, the mulberry bush. Here we go round the mulberry bush so early in the morning…”
I would very much like to see the pruning process you use for your mulberries. (Even if its just you talking about it while drawing a little sketch) ❤
Unless you enjoy the individual selection and therapeutic time, you could devise catchment systems that would allow the berries to be caught and roll down to a center collection point. Tarp, or mosquito netting or any mesh smaller than the berry diameter, attach to the lower branches out away from the trunk and have them slope down to the trunk, or to a fixed ring out a couple of feet around the trunk. If you can’t collect one night, you can either retrieve the windfalls from the lower point or toss them to the critters the next morning and let the net catch the fresh ones. You can use a long tool handle or even a 20ft or less piece of pvc to agitate the branches and encourage them to drop all that are ready while you are there.
My large yard tortoise loves mulberries..........mouth is always purple this time of year.
Don't forget about the leaves. Cook them like any green, or dry and put away for tea..High protein. When you trim your trees, harvest the leaves.
I’ve got 33 acres , so room is no problems. I have planted about 10 in our permaculture set up. I’ve decided to prune hard tomorrow. I will create a bowl shape Mulberry tree rather than a centre leader. Try to keep growth a bit lower.
They were used for silkbug farming in northern Italy, then all cut down for conventional monoculture, you see some survivors as fields hedges. I planted 2 as an omage to the history of Friuli, although one is a southern Italy variety which I thought would survive drought better. They are young and I miss them but I will see them in March when I go for pruning. Thanks for the tips :)
@@CariMachet Thank you, Cari, will do :)
[Looks up at mulberry tree.]
[And Up]
[AND UP]
*Every* year, huh? That explains a lot. Off to look up pollarding now.
I make mulberry jam every year. I love eating them fresh off the tree but look out for young stink bugs. (They don’t taste good)😂 I put a sheet on the ground and shake the branches to harvest.
The one thing you forgot to mention is that you can pick the leaves, dehydrate and powder. Tea or encapsulated Mulberry leaf helps lower blood sugar levels in type 2 diabetics. I am not a Dr but I grow this for my hubs who is diabetic and has trouble keeping his blood sugars in control. We both take it daily. Also, white mulberry makes great tree hay for larger livestock as an easily grown alternative to hay.
Another very educational video! I have a “dwarf” mulberry or at least that’s how it was labeled, it’s now over 30’ tall. I whack it back every winter and tie down long branches to make it easier to harvest. We did get fruit flies for the first time this year. Our entire family got Covid during mulberry harvest time, because we were all pretty sick we couldn’t harvest the berries so the fruit flies did.
haha dwarf. We planted a dwarf mulberry this year (and planted it in mostly shaded environment in poor soil where the grass hardly grows to boot), it has only grown a foot so far and I was pondering if I should have gotten an Illinois everbearing because this dwarf isn't doing too much yet.
I ordered my tree mail order. It arrived as a 1 1/2” stick. It took it 3 years to really take off. It’s planted on top of a slope with very poor soil but in full sun. We’ve done chop and drop mulch, but besides that it pretty much gets ignored. I’m guesstimating we got at least 5,000 berries this year. You might want to give your tree another year or two.
The “dwarf” in the name refers to the size of the fruit not the size of the tree. I have one and the fruit is so small I let the birds have it.
It makes a mess and I think that is its best attribute. I love to listen to people complain about em....
Mulberries are my favorite since I was a little boy. I remember spending every summer sitting in a full mulberry tree. It’s a dye that can be used without a Morris as well!
I have an ever berry. We spread multiple shower liners under the tree and gather berries every day. We will harvest 6 pints . This is every day. We love them.
I literally just cut a brach off a mulberry tree a while back. It's about as big around as my pinky and about 15 inches long. I put it in wet potting soil and it's already got new leaves growing not even 2 full weeks later. I'm gonna put it in the ground soon and feed it like a starving hostage.
Plant it down the back of a property so you can make sure your kids change out of their school clothes before visiting it every afternoon, and you've got after school snacks sorted for the duration of its fruiting. A harvest that extends over weeks or months is a positive if you use it right.
We had a mulberry, at one time. I slipped on the fruit, while mowing, and almost went under. That was the end of that. Nearby, we had a tree at the elementary school where I would go pick. I love free food! (Except when i mow.)
My rabbits love the leaves. I'm planning on planting a hedge of everbearing mulberries to help feed them and cut down on feed costs. I just pollard them down below the fence level.
That’s good to know as I want to get rabbits 🐇. Thanks
@@euphoniahale5181 Mexican Sunflowers work well too, but I think the mulberries produce way more leaves and regrow faster. You may also want to plant perennial cover crops like Chicory, Crimson Clover and Alfalfa. I put those in open parts of my garden wherever I have room.
Planted one this year. I have lots of room and I planned for a large size. I hope it can thrive in my zone 5b and high wind location
I live in Illinois zone 5b, and its windy, so I think it will do fine!
@@ale347baker thank you! Did you give it any protection early or was it ok?
My hands have been purple all week from eating mulberries. Great health benefits!! My birds, critters & dogs are helping me eat them & keeping the mess smaller. I prune it to keep it shorter.
I bought two Mulberry starts from Baker Creek. Cloned them, and now have 4 trees☺️ I love mulberries, but they're so expensive in CA! Tripled my berry plantings this year. Very tired of paying so much for organic berries. About $18 per pound of my guess for 3 small baskets at the farmers market.
Grew up with several fruitless Mulberry trees, made fall so nice and supplied me with leaves for compost and mulch.
Great video! I have three “volunteer” wild mulberry trees. They just popped up one day and started growing. I didn’t know anything about mulberry trees at that time. I didn’t even know if the berries were edible. But I decided to let the trees grow. Every single year two of the trees produce sooooo many mulberries and they are always delicious. The third tree never produces any. 🤷. So glad I kept them and let them grow.
This fast growing tree makes fruit while growing good firewood. Win win. Just propagate.
Nice thoughts. Thanks.
My dad grew raspberries in Idaho, but if I plant them in viginia, they just become huge thorny weeds. I have blueberries, but the birds eat them all. There is a mulberry in neighbors yard and the branches go about 50 feet I to my yard. I eat a few and the rest just fall and the birds eat some. Mulberries are great.
What a wonderful time just watching your video ❤❤❤
Pollarding was originally done to gather hay or browsing material for sheep goats and cattle. Nice video. I have a mess of cuttings I still need to plant out.
My rabbits love mullberry trimmings.
love the way you think. Please keep mulberry content coming!!! How to get more fruit, show us coppicing, etc.
Recently purchased a new 3 acre property with a strange tree on it. Young friend comes to visit and wigs out of this 40ft diameter mulberry tree. I've fallen in love with it. I've discovered that they are amongst the highest antioxidant berries we can grow. Messy, but the Canadian geese clean up the goo.
Thank you for clearing up a question I had regarding chickens eating the fallen fruit. My tree hangs into a fenced orchard, where I plan on growing chickens😊
3:33 I cut mine back to a waist high stump every year after fruiting. They come back with a vengance.
Thank you for sharing this important information listening from Bangs Texas
Angela : you are a GOD send for education to me. Thank You.
I have a 2 year old mulberry I’m going to pollard next spring. Thanks for the good advice about keeping it for livestock feed!
Thank you Angela!! 😊 I'm excited about adding Mulberries to my system as well.
I rented a house with a huge black mulberry right next to the clothes-line.
Love this thank you for sharing your insights ! My mom, myself, and my partner all have the best childhood memories surrounding around mulberry trees :) I purchased one last year, and we found one on a hike with my son so now he’s very excited about them.
That abundance is going to turn into a great blessing one day.
have a few trees. last year we had hardly any fruit in our mouths due to the birds eating almost every single one!!! just as an add. the birds poop also turns purple when they eat them.... They are amazing, the leaves have medicinal qualities, are edible as spinach type leaves, and also handy for silk worms and guinea pigs
The bird poop does indeed stain. I removed a volunteer tree on my East Coast property for this reason. It is in a coastal community where awnings and furniture and floors are all light colored (until they are visited by these purple splatters)
I love your videos and was up this morning looking for things to plant near my run. Perfect timing on the video :)
Wonderful!!
LOVE your helpful practical info best syrup I ever made!!!!!* I grow 5 types of berries and do a lot of syrup for kombucha 2nd ferment, but THIS recipe beats all! Put mulberry and water to cook a juice cooked 20 min then mash well add sugar and add a bit of pectin and boil hard, turn off fire and dump in 3 cups fresh mint......leave in 5 min (NO MORE or funky off taste) and strain and can it/
I've got a new volunteer Mulberry between the driveway, and the next door neighbor's ugly fence.
It's about 5 feet tall this year.
Earlier this year I WAS going to dig it up, and send it to someone else's yard.
But recently I've decided to get creative with it.
Since it's closer to the fence, I now want to espalier it into some shape that looks cool & funky! Hopefully the weird shapes I choose will take the attention away from the ugly fence!
This means I'll be pollarding it, but I haven't decided at what height to do that...
Even tho it will be growing in a lot of shade, it will still produce berries, altho not as many as the sun soaked Mulberries!
And that's ok.
Because it grows so fast, an espalier Mulberry will be a fun project!
My current thought is to wire the branches (like in bonsai) and have them grow very long horizontally & in a wavy pattern...
Do yall think I should pollard it at the same height as the fence? Or shorter?
I don't think I want it to grow taller than the fence, I want to encourage horizontal growth.
I've got about 30 feet of fence length to fill, with the tree standing in the first third of the space. (So it's NOT centered.)
Oh! Just had an idea!
Since the tree is not centered along the fence-
What if I grow one side of the tree branches super long and wavy, and along the "short side" of the fence, grow those branches in loops!
You know, so it looks like it's not centered on purpose!
Half the tree growing in one set of shapes,
And the other half growing in a different set of shapes!
Ha! If you could see the picture in my head!!
That might look pretty good!
Whaddya think?
Because the tree grows so fast, the branches are brittle and break easily. It won't hold up to bonsai type growth.
@Sartorial Solutions
Funny you should mention it...
Bcuz,
Nature proved you right before I could even start on it!
The big ice storm we had (now dubbed TreeMaggedon bcuz of how many trees and large branches the ice took out) ended up dropping a big Oak branch on the little volunteer Mulberry, and broke all 3 leaders on it.
I had to cut all of it all the way back to the ground.
Now that it's May, there are new branches popping up.
I knew it wouldn't give up!
But I am kinda bummed about not doing a little bonsai on it...
Oh well...
I'll just let it do what it wants to do!
We'll never complain about more berries!
I think I've just been eating the stems without knowing it, so you definitely can get used to it...
There are a few trees in my neighborhood, They have a ton of Fruits and under the trees are side walks. It can get dangerously slippery on the sidewalks from all the ripe mushy fruits. I noticed that there are different types of Mulberries, some are small and very mushy and there are the bigger ones like you have. I prefer the bigger ones. I love them and recently I have been putting some in my smoothies.
Great all round low down on this plant, thank you👌
great for adding to compost or mulch excellent bulk
Excellent video - thanks!
Really good info. Thank you!
I love your thinking.
Thank you!
Lol love a little "after-dinner cocktail"
Well! I was very excited about the Illinois Everbearing that I planted this spring - but my enthusiasm has been tempered by a cold splash of reality! 😀 I was already planning on moving it this fall/winter, and after this video, I am reassessing where...and whether I might want a different variety.
After a bit more research, one thing is very clear: If I continue down Mulberry street, I need to be ready to almost chop it down every year! 😀 Forewarned is forearmed.
Awesome video
All that biomass is nice too! Makes for good wood chips, natural stakes/trellises, etc.
I have many Mulberry trees on our property. I Pollard them too! I have them on a 3 year cycle.
Chickens can eat the leaves too!
Hello from Pennsylvania.. great video as always!
I am going to plant one of the exact same cultivar right in the duck run where they have their little ponds and hangout spots... thanks!
With the right am fungi in the soil, mulberry could also be a mother tree and nurse nearby smaller plants and trees. It is very deep rooted so it can also do extensive nutrient cycling even if you don't harvest the fruit and it falls to the ground. Leaves can be fed to livestock. It is a very solid pioneer species.
Haaaahaaaa 😅❤ Loving that Comment on the Mulberry High 16 ft Tall
Rewatching because I just planted my first dwarf mulberry today. Wish me luck! Thank you for your advice
Just purchased a weeping mulberry tree. So looking forward to harvest!
The Illinois everbearing is a good hybrid.
I found a dwarf mulberry variety that should grow only up to 2mt, the fruits are still very tasty! So far I am happy with it!
Morus rotundiloba I remembered the name!
I am in my 2nd year trying to get some Mulberry to grow Here in Northern, PA.
As you mentioned... it is about diversity.
We have not had and Apples or Pears for 6 years due to late frosts.
So I began planting and propagating currants (red & Black) , Gooseberries, Strawberries (June bearing and ever bearing ) and both Blackberries and Raspberries.
If a frost or a drought affects one, we'll have some other form of fruit.
First ones died, then I got scions to root and they are barely hanging on.
I think you can still copice and treat it more like a tall bush removing 1/3 of it every year.
As to picking...
If you have an overabundance you can always let others come and pick.
You may also consider trying to propagate from cuttings or air-layer a few branches to create new trees so the IF you decide to cut this one all the way down to start a copice and it fails, you have others already in the ground growing.
Wishing you all the best.
I was all ready to get mulberries to plant this year, but by the time I chose my varieties, they were sold out. Going to try again this year or next spring.
I found some native red mullberries growing in a vacant lot
I picked all I could then I noticed some young saplings growing around the big tree. I dug up three of them and I planted them by my house. They are 20 feet tall now and they seem to bear every other year without any attention from me. Maybe if I pruned them I would get berries every year.
I fed some trimmings to my rabbit and she eats leaves and pencil thick branches too.
I noticed that the native berries aren't really very sweet. Then I put a bowl of berries in the fridge overnight and the next day they were much sweeter. The chilling must do something to develop the sugars.
I hope to try rooting some plants after the berry season ends.
Makes me want to make a plan for where to put one!
Remember these as a child. I would like to have one on my property but not sure if there is room. Thanks for the informative video
It is interesting to me that so many people enjoy eating mulberries.
Mulberries are a favorite in Armenia where I grew up! For a long time I thought they only grow there, cause none of my international friends knew what I was talking about. 😂 I was so happy to discover them recently in many countries with warm climate. Hoping to have my own tree one day when I have a house with a garden 🙏.
There are trees that produce white fruit - it doesn't stain, it's a bit less sweet (still not sour at all), which for me is a plus cause I can eat more of them! 😋And we eat them with the stems, even the part outside. A bit more to chew, but the fiber from it is good to get l, considering all the sugar in the berry itself.
Great video. ‘Hi duck.’
I just bought some dwarfs. Wish me luck
Yum.
I got a strong Portlandia vibe at the start of this vid
Nah I live in East Portland. Where the part of the city that hipster Portlandia never bothered to cover.
I grow about 10 feet away from the house prune the brances to reach on top the house i get on the roof and pick 1000s mulberries i have gallon size zip locks i picked today 4-5-24
I ve been standing under my mulberry tree every day now since a week, eating myself silly. My Pakistani mulberry is not really staining, I noticed. I also eat my berries, as soon as they are almost completely ripe, because otherwise the birds will beat me to it. That way, slightly underripe, they actually have a bit of acidity which is delicious!
Chickens peacocks, birds will eat them, and they will fly up and keep shaking the tree, and all of the other chickens all the ground and wait
The saying getting caught red handed comes from people stealing mulberries. In Queensland Australia we have the Queensland fig bird. This bird eats the best ones. I don't mind I grow it as a food hedge. If I get some berries it is all good. Propagation is so easy just get a new growing end cut it off and put it in soil, keep it moist.
I love eating them but now I’m scared!
We live in Illinois and we have the wild mulberries in the back of our property. We don’t get to it all but we have berries most of the summer.
We had various orbital spiders on our white mulberry tree when it first started fruiting. We had been living here for 2 decades at that time and had never seen those types of spiders on our property before.