Magnificent Mulberries

A mulberry is the rare fruit tree that asks almost nothing of you and pays you back within a couple of seasons. I’m Ruth Nakamura, and over fifteen years I’ve grown twelve cultivars in my Pacific Northwest garden — Black Beauty, Chinook, Illini Star, Ozark Premier and the rest — through good years, bad pruning … 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…