Ruth Nakamura · February 6, 2026
Why I Know This Subject You know, my sister called me up one sunny mid-June, exasperated and asking how I managed to keep birds from decimating my mulberry harvest while she was losing entire branches to them. She’d done everything right—planted a promising tree, pruned diligently—and still watched as robins stripped it bare before the … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · February 2, 2026
Stains happened to me before I understood what I was doing. I showed up at a family barbecue that summer with discolored hands, a shirt that would never come clean, and a tale that got better with each retelling. By now I’ve developed a whole approach to harvesting, processing, and storing mulberries without walking around … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · January 31, 2026
Between 40 and 65 pounds of fruit hangs from my mature mulberry trees most seasons—an amount that seems impossible until you realize how much of that production depends on what happens in the soil beneath the canopy. I spent over a decade watching otherwise vigorous trees plateau and decline, only to discover the culprit wasn’t … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · January 27, 2026
Are you wondering why your mulberry seems to struggle through its first year when you’ve done everything the internet tells you to do? I missed my peak harvest window during my first two growing seasons because I treated mulberry ripening like a fixed date instead of what it actually is—a weather-dependent window that compresses and … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · January 25, 2026
Hi there! I’m Ruth Nakamura, a backyard orchardist living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Over the past 15 years, I’ve dived deep into the world of mulberries, growing about 12 different cultivars right in my own yard. My favorites include Black Beauty, Chinook, Illini Star, and Ozark Premier, each offering its own unique flavor and … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · January 23, 2026
You’ll encounter two conflicting pieces of advice about mulberry watering online: one source will tell you these trees need daily irrigation during summer, while another claims they’re drought-proof and barely need water once they’re a few years old. The first one is dead wrong — at least for home growers in the Pacific Northwest like … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · January 22, 2026
Almost every new mulberry grower makes the same wrong assumption: that because the tree is famously tough once established, the planting itself doesn’t need much thought. I made exactly that mistake with my first tree — wrong depth, no drainage check, no stake in a spot that caught wind off the fence line — and … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · January 20, 2026
Hi there! I’m Ruth Nakamura, a backyard orchardist in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, where I’ve been happily growing mulberries for about 15 years. Over the years, I’ve cultivated a dozen different mulberry cultivars, including favorites like Black Beauty, Chinook, Illini Star, and Ozark Premier. Growing these trees has been a labor of love, filled with … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · January 18, 2026
You’ll run into two competing pieces of advice the moment you start shopping for a mulberry tree: buy whatever variety looks best on the nursery tag, or pick strictly for cold-hardiness and ignore the rest. Both are wrong for a beginner, and I learned that the expensive way. My first tree was an ornamental white … Read more
Ruth Nakamura · January 16, 2026
Most people stepping into mulberry propagation assume you need fancy equipment, a greenhouse setup, or maybe even some kind of formal training to pull it off successfully. That assumption trips up more growers than anything else, because the truth is almost laughably simple — I’ve rooted more mulberry cuttings in my back shed using a … Read more
