Growing mulberries in Florida is a no-brainer… yet it’s surprising to me how rare they are as a fruit tree.
Rachel is now my wife; and though we no longer live in South Florida, we did take a trip back a few years ago and asked Rachel’s mom if the tree was still at the end of the alley. Sadly, it was toppled during a hurricane and then removed – but a far-sighted neighbor had taken cuttings before its demise and planted them across the street in an empty lot.
This Illinois Everbearing mulberry tree is only two years old and already bears gallons of berries!
Sure, songbirds sometimes eat the berries and then re-create Pollack masterpieces across the hood of your Honda… but that’s a small price to pay for mulberry pie… dried mulberries… mulberry brandy… mulberry cobbler… and smiling children with purple fingers.
I read – with horror – that some landscape-minded plant breeders have bred fruitless varieties. FRUITLESS! If I were them, I would watch the sky for lightning bolts. God makes one of the most productive and delicious fruits known to man… and you breed the fruit off it?
Growing Mulberry Trees
Mulberries produce in spring and are an attractive shade tree the rest of the year.
I’ve had tiny trees (not from seed) produce fruits. And when mulberries are young, they grow like weeds. They also respond very well to pruning. I’m trying different methods of tree shaping to keep the berries within reach for ease of picking. Untended mulberry trees can get tall quickly.
Mulberry Varieties
As for varieties, that’s where things get complicated. Morus alba, Morus rubra and Morus nigra all look quite similar and hybridize readily, producing fertile offspring. In fact, Morus alba, the “white mulberry,” has been classified as invasive in some states due to its ability to hybridize with the native red mulberry (Morus rubra), threatening the species.
SPUDOMETER RATING:
4.5 Spuds!
Name: Mulberry
Latin Name: Morus alba, Morus nigra, Morus rubra
Type: Tree
Nitrogen Fixer: No
Medicinal: No
Cold-hardy: Yes
Exposure: Full sun to part shade
Part Used: Fruit, sometimes leaves
Propagation: Grafting, cuttings, seed
Taste: Very good
Method of preparation: Fresh, dried, jams, jellies, and in awesome cobbler (thanks, Rach!)
Storability: Poor
Ease of growing: Easy
Nutrition: Good
Recognizability: Low
Availability: Low
You can have greener thumbs by this weekend!
42 comments
my best friend Laura and I picked her neighbors tree clean when we were kids. the tree is still there, but I don't know the owners. It was pruned back to nothing one year and it took awhile to recover. Such good fun!
Great memory. :)
Could you tell me the current price of your mulberry trees? How tall are they? I live in Osteen Florida and would have to put them in the trunk of my car or in the back of a pickup so I wouldn’t want them too tall. It is a nice little drive to Ocala but I don’t know any nursery local that has them.
I live in a very moist area with acid soil. I have a cypress head in my yard so I’m hoping it wouldn’t be to wet for them. I have acreage, some wetter than others.
Thanks, Judith
Right now I have dwarf mulberries for $10.00 (2′ tall) and some very young one-gallon white-fruited mulberries (12″ tall) for $6 a pot. I would plant them on mounds, just in case.
Hi David. I need some advice. Our beautiful dwarf everbearing mulberries are infested with some sort of worm that makes little webs. I’m horrified and sad. Our son used to race us out to the garden to get to the berries first. I sprayed them twice with an organic “atomic grow” that we purchased from our nursery. There has no improvement as of yet. I see new little green leaf buds emerging. Help :(
Hi David, where r u located? I would like to buy some mullbery plants
I fell in love with the idea of a mulberry tree a year ago but my well stocked local nursery only carried the morus rubra and living in a small FL suburban lot with power lines all over the place I realized there just wasn’t a good place for the tree, I contented myself with looking for the dwarf everbearing variety of morus nigra but couldn’t find one except for mail order for an exorbitant price. On a whim I stopped by Lowes and found a whole stash of them! At lowes of all places! I grabbed two 2′ plants and am hoping to pot them but wasn’t sure how well they’d do. Have you had success with potting mulberries? The info tag says they should be shrubby and grow to 2′-6′ tall and wide but my online research (which varied considerably) says morus nigra grow to be very large bushes. What’s your experience with them? Thanks! And I loved your Survival Garden book.
Even if you get a HUGE variety, you can crop the living daylights out of it. Saw it to the ground every couple of years in the fall or winter and you’ll basically force it to become a small tree – they can take incredible amounts of pruning.
The dwarf ones generally are genetically dwarfed and haven’t gotten more than 8′ in my yard. Good work finding one!
I planted two mulberry trees last fall. Both now have small brown spots on the leaves. Should I be concerned about this? If so, what is causing it and how do I fix it?
Here’s what it looks like: https://imgur.com/ZWG0xXg
[…] been visiting Survival Gardening a great deal lately and David mentions mulberries all the time. So, I have been on the hunt for them in my […]
David,
Will Illinois Ever bearing mulberry tree grow in south Sarasota county?
Growing zones say either 4-8 or 4-9, and I am in 9b. Will they not fruit
if it’s too hot?
I already have 4 of the same tree that bears fruit in May, and would like
one that fruits in summer.
David,
Will Illinois Ever bearing mulberry tree grow in south Sarasota county?
Growing zones say either 4-8 or 4-9, and I am in 9b. Will they not fruit
if it’s too hot?
I already have 4 of the same tree that bears fruit in May, and would like
one that fruits in summer.
I believe it will grow fine there. I’ve seen other cultivars doing great in Ft. Lauderdale. The heat doesn’t seem to bother them much.
Thank you for the quick response, David.I appreciate your help with this.I love your website and all the info you give. I have usedquite a bit of it on my 5 acres.
Hi, I have a mulberry tree, and have heard from one source that you can make mulberry tea by drying out the mature leaves. Another site completely contradicts this statement by saying that mature mulberry leaves can actually be toxic. Apparently the only ones you can eat are the immature ones, and you still have to boil them for about twenty minutes. I just wanted to clarify that way I don’t end up with my entire family in the hospital getting their stomachs pumped, thank you.
I wish I could say for sure. I do know that some mulberries have edible leaves. Unfortunately, there are multiple species of mulberries.
David, a nursery owner in Homestead gave me a mulberry plant about 10 years ago. I had no idea what it was, but planted it along a fence in my Hallandale garden. A year or so later, I started reveling in handfuls of fruit each time I walked out to my car, and that lasted for years. Last year, in one season, it withered and died. From what I can read online, it was a Morus Nigra ‘Dwarf Everbearing’. Do you know where I can find one 18+ inches tall (locally or shipped) in Broward or Dade County? I miss all those stained purple fingers … ;-)
Hi – so glad to find this site. I live in central Florida, Kissimmee, and have an everfruiting mulberry close to 10 years old-( red berries turn black when ready for the birds) how long do these trees last – it suddenly died!! Everything else in this section of my yard, many native species, are doing great!
I have rue, black berry Lilly, Hercules club, fringe tree, pigeon plum, fl privat, dehoon holly, mimosa, loquat, partridge pea in that area and all those are fine – any thoughts on what killed it.
Sounds like a virus or a blight. Usually they live longer than we do. I’m sorry to hear that. I’d plant another one in the yard but not in the exact same spot. Fortunately, they grow quickly. You’ve got a great collection of plants there!
Hey David,
Got a Dwarf Mulberry back in April and it’s doing well. I have it in a huge pot now and it has already produced fruit. Yummy! Never had a Mulberry before. Does the fruit grow on new growth or old, or both? It has about doubled in growth since then and am wondering if I should prune it regularly or just let it go. I think I should get it in the ground; how long will it last in the pot? It’s needing watering almost daily. Any fertilizing necessary?
Thanks,
Lori
For readers from other regions, remember that mulberries can grow in very cold winter climates as well.
Dried mulberries are another way to store them. Our mulberries are bland, so the dried ones are too, but mixed with plain natural yogurt, they give gorgeous color and gentle sweetness.
My mulberry (Reno NV) usually has ripe fruit from June 28 through July 3, at which point it is all gone. It is in my back acreage, and I don’t usually even look at it until mid june to check the berries, but I just went out today and it has not leafed out! There are some clusters of dead looking things (possibly left over from last year) with a few tiny leaves at the base. I am wondering if the leaves got done in by a late frost and this is a new set and all is OK, or if I have some sort of problem. The weather has been a bit wacky, with freezes going into April, then a week of 75 degrees then a week of 50 degrees. What do you think? (I love my tree — it grew out of a boring tree that died maybe 15 years ago, that had apparently been grafted onto a mulberry root stock)
My poor mulberry has been through a lot. We had a larger home moved in and the movers ran over and parked the old home on top of it, which sat there for a month. To my surprise, it recovered. I just had to cut off the dead top. I’ve since propagated about ten cuttings and will probably do more soon. It was my first successful propagation of a fruit tree. Maybe I’ll have them as a border along one side of my three acre property, or both. I haven’t decided yet.
Great work, William.
What do I need to know for starting cuttings from our Mulberry?
See here: http://www.thesurvivalgardener.com/from-inbox-two-mulberry-questions/
Thank you for all the information. Please, where do I buy a Mulberry tree? thanks, sally
Great info, thanks! I just received two ever-bearing and can’t wait to see them grow and become a part of my fledgling food forest. I can’t say I’ve ever eaten mulberries but this new journey in growing a sustainable, edible yard has me trying all kinds of wonderful Florida natives and tropical varieties I otherwise wouldn’t find or try. It’s been a wonderful experience so far!
Good work, Chris. You’ll love them.
I read that mulberry leaves help keep down blood sugar levels. I have been making a tea and drinking it. I just pull off a couple leaves and pour steaming water over them. It is tasty and I am still alive. I don’t know how it has effected my blood sugar because I do not have a tester, maybe someone who does will try it. There is also a supplement made of white mulberry leaves on Amazon that is for blood sugar.
Mulberry leaves are considered medicinal in Chinese medicine.
It can’t be worse than pharmaceuticals!
I love mulberry trees. I’m in Illinois so the Illinois ever-bearing varieties seem to pop up like “weeds”.
I have noticed that the trees with the most fruit occurring in forests & parks are in places with lots of sun and water.
There are ~4-5 that are naturally sprouting in the garden/yard and I am hoping to be able to integrate/prune them into the garden without completely shading out the raspberries, brassica and Chicago Hardy Fig Tree :) Also, some volunteer peach trees (next to a juniper with can be an issue) and some black walnut volunteers.
The biggest and best-bearing mulberries are usually right next to a river or pond with 8+ hours of sun.
The biggest tree that I’ve seen must be like 40-60 about 10-15′ from a river’. But unfortunately someone pruned away the lower branches though luckily I grabbed a few berries first!
Back when we used to be the unofficial goat vets in our area, a guy came to us with one of his goats, concerned because they’d gotten into his mulberry tree leaves. After their snack they passed PILES of worms, but seemed otherwise fine. We researched it and found that mulberry leaves are a natural anthelmintic for goats! What a handy survival medicinal plant for animals as well!
Oh, that’s cool – I should give some to ours.
When is the best time to prune mulberry?
Hi David, a big fan of yours. I have a small food forest in my backyard in Port Charlotte. I have had a mulberry tree for quite a few years. After 3 years. And a height of about 15ft still very few berries
I pruned it back,about 5ft now close to 18 ft and still sparse berries. I love mulberries,what am I doing wrong? Thanks for your help
Eddie
Hi Eddie. Thank you.
Is it in the shade – or perhaps getting too much nitrogen?
Your comments about mulberries in south FL bring back memories. My grade school in Broadview (441, just south of North Lauderdale) had a mulberry tree in the play yard. We would get covered in purple during recess. I guess the parents complained. The next year, our beloved tree had been chopped down.
We have a huge everbearing mulberry tree in our backyard in Dunnellon (near Ocala). It’s basically the corner of our chicken coop and what used to be our pig pen. The pigs absolutely LOVED the leaves as well as the fruit. It is extremely prolific and requires zero care.
My grandfather kept it in a big pot when we lived in West Palm Beach and I remember my sister and I as kids using my grandmothers saved country crock butter dishes to store berries in. We’d bite the ends off and apply the juice as “lipstick”. We’d come in full and happy with our purple mouths and fingers. That same tree moved to Dunnellon with us and was planted in the ground 15 years ago and it still brings me joy.
I’m glad you brought it with you! The leaves are indeed a great animal fodder.
Question. I bought several mulberry plantings online last year from three different suppliers. Three are already showing signs of flowering… but they appear to be male to my untrained eye and my best Internet source on the issue. Now what? What if the stragglers are also male. No fruit, right? Not seeing any source for buying only female mulberry cuttings. Any ideas? Any other comments on the general issue of pairing male/female mulberries. Seems to me that having several male mulberries is overkill.
They are almost certainly female – no nursery I have ever seen sells male mulberries, unless you’re dealing with forestry suppliers selling red mulberry. Just wait – they’ll turn into fruit. They look like little white puffs to begin with, then mature into fruit.
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