Ruth Nakamura

A mulberry is the rare fruit tree that asks almost nothing of you and pays you back within a couple of seasons. Cultivars including Black Beauty, Chinook, Illini Star, and Ozark Premier grow well in Pacific Northwest gardens, thriving through good years, challenging pruning decisions, and competitive pressure from wildlife. This is the guide I … Read more

For the first three years on this property, I grew exactly one mulberry tree. It was a volunteer that had seeded itself along the fence line, and I thought that was enough. I was wrong. That single tree dropped fruit…

The first few years after I planted my mulberry trees, I treated the ground beneath them like dead space. I mowed around the trunks, kept the soil bare, and figured the trees would do their own thing. They did —…

The first time I had a truly massive mulberry harvest — somewhere around year three on this homestead — I panicked. I stood in my backyard staring at forty pounds of freshly picked fruit with absolutely no plan. I processed…

In the spring of my first year on this homestead, I planted a mulberry tree eight feet from my back fence. I was proud of that decision. I had done my research — or so I thought — and I…

In year three of growing mulberries, I stood under my first mature white mulberry and watched about forty pounds of fruit hit the ground over the course of a week. I had no system. I had no containers. I had…