Mulberry tree

I grow a few different mulberry trees.  For some reason, mulberry trees in Australia tend to be mislabeled more often than not.  

This mulberry tree was meant to be a black mulberry (Morus nigra) but was obvious when it arrived that it was a white mulberry Morus alba (or a hybrid of alba).  The fruit of this tree is meant to be very dark, and the taste is meant to be great, which means it should still be worth growing even though it is not a black mulberry.  

The first year the tree grew well over six feet tall.  This fast growth is a trait of white mulberries, black mulberry are usually slow growing.  I had it growing in a pot of soil, and think it would have grown larger had it been in the ground.  The little tree was strong, and went dormant over winter.

The tree broke dormancy in spring and started to grow.  It had a few berries developing at each leaf node.  Then we were hit with a very late severe frost.  The tree was burned by the frost and lost about 6 feet of growth.  My other, larger more established mulberry trees all lost over 6 feet of growth to that frost.  Needless to say, this little tree did not produce any berries that year. 

The little mulberry tree survived, and grew well, then went dormant over winter.  Now spring is here my little tree is breaking dormancy again.  It has fresh new leaves, and each leaf node looks to be producing several mulberries.

As you can see below, this tree is trying to be rather productive.  

Mulberry breaking dormancy

This tree is covered in developing fruit.  Hopefully this year I get to taste some of them.  

Interestingly, last year my larger more established mulberry trees were loaded in fruit, and were all severely burnt by the late frost.  I worried because my white shahtoot mulberry looked like it had been killed.  It was burnt back to a stump.  I'm happy to say it survived and did a lot of growing last spring/summer, and this year has more developing berries than I have ever seen before. 

White shahtoot mulberry

White shahtoot breaking dormancy

I have said before that a mulberry tree is like a vegetable garden on a trunk.  The berries are delicious, and the leaves are surprisingly nutritious.  

Obviously people can eat mulberry fruits, but not many people in Australia realise you can also eat mulberry leaves.  People can eat mulberry leaves cooked (or raw), they can be used to wrap things, and mulberry leaves make a nice 'tea'.  Basically any animal that eat leaves will eat mulberry leaves.  Mulberry leaves taste ok cooked, and are more nutritious than most common vegetables.  

The leaves from my dark fruited mulberry tree can be huge.  As mulberry tree leaves make great vegetables, producing a lot of large leaves is another great trait to have.  

Mulberry is a great leaf vegetable

At the moment I am growing this tree in a pot.  I planned to grow it in a pot for the first year or so and then put it in the garden.  I should have planted it into the soil this past winter or the one before, but I didn't, and now it will have to wait until next winter.  

You can see below that the pot also has miner's lettuce (Claytonia perfoliata) growing in it.  I didn't plant the miner's lettuce, but some seed got in somehow, and I encouraged it to grow.  This annual vegetable germinates in winter, grows until the weather gets hot, then sets seed and dies.  The miner's lettuce in the pot acts as a living mulch, weed seeds do not germinate as it is too thick.  

I like the taste of miner's lettuce, and I like how it self seeds and reappears each year for me.  Saving seed of miner's lettuce is fiddly, so I find it easier to grow some miner's lettuce in a pot, and when it seeds I move the pot to where I want this plant to grow the following year.  Inevitably some seed falls from the pot, and I have a new patch of miner's lettuce the following winter.  It's kind of the lazy way to save seed.

Sometimes miner's lettuce appears in the lawn, but doesn't grow large enough to eat as it keeps getting mown.  It still flowers and sets seed in the lawn, this seed gets washed around in rains or moved by wind, then the following winter seedlings pop up in new places.  I wish I had more of this growing, and am always sad when it succumbs to the heat and dies off for the season. 

Mulberry tree growing in a pot of soil

Miner's lettuce flowering

While I was originally disappointed that this tree was not a black mulberry (Morus nigra), and it appears to be a dark fruited white mulberry (Morus alba), it is still a good tree.  It is showing strong growth even when conditions are not great, it looks to be rather productive, and it has abundant large leaves.  Hopefully it has the classic mulberry taste as there is no point growing it if the berries don't taste great.  Normally mulberries begin to ripen around December/January here, so unless something goes wrong I will hopefully be able to eat some soon.

I may try to grow some from cuttings and see how readily they root.  If the fruit is good, and if this one is easy to propagate, I may build up numbers and share around some of the plants.  If that happens I may list them on my for sale page.