Ruth Nakamura Ruth Nakamura · April 28, 2026
Three months ago, my doctor flagged my fasting blood sugar as “borderline.” Nothing catastrophic, but enough to shake me. She recommended lifestyle changes — less refined carbs, more movement, and possibly some targeted supplementation. That conversation sent me down a…
Ruth Nakamura · April 27, 2026
Last spring, I stood in my backyard staring up at my mulberry tree and quietly dreading the next few hours. My hands were already sore from gripping my old bypass pruners, and I hadn’t even started yet. Every year, the…
Ruth Nakamura · April 25, 2026
Every summer, my mulberry trees go absolutely berserk. Within two weeks, I have more fruit than my family, my neighbors, and honestly my entire street could ever eat fresh. Last year I lost nearly three pounds of berries to mold…
Ruth Nakamura · April 23, 2026
The first sign is usually sticky. A film of honeydew coats the leaves below a branch, black sooty mold starts creeping across the bark, and somewhere in the mess you’ll spot either hard, crusty bumps or soft white cottony clusters clinging to the wood. That’s the signature of mulberry’s most common sap-sucking pests — scale … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · April 21, 2026
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…
Ruth Nakamura · April 19, 2026
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 —…
Ruth Nakamura · April 17, 2026
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…
Ruth Nakamura · April 15, 2026
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…
Ruth Nakamura · April 13, 2026
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…
Ruth Nakamura · April 11, 2026
I have been growing mulberry trees for years, and for most of that time I treated the leaves as an afterthought — something the tree produced in abundance that I composted or ignored while focusing on the fruit. That changed when I started researching traditional uses of Morus alba and discovered that mulberry leaves have … Read more
