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Fruit & Orchards

how and when to propagate 30 foot mulberry tree?

12 years ago

How do I get a cutting?

How to plant it?

When to do this?

Thanks

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Comments (6)

lucky_p
12 years ago
I've had minimal success rooting mulberry cuttings - some success with semi-hardwood cuttings in early to mid-summer, but none whatsoever with dormant cuttings. Seems a bit odd, though, since mulberry's 'cousin', the fig, roots so easily in almost any season.
Here's one method that I've not tried, but as mulberry is a 'milky sap' tree, it should work:
Rooting a Truncheon:
"Truncheons are branches, about as thick as a human arm that we can grow into new plants. The branches are cut at about 170-180 cm long. Cut the top of the branch at a slant,
which prevents water from rotting the truncheon. Before planting the truncheon, itshould first be kept under shade for a few days to develop a hard layer over the cut end.
If the cut end is not covered with this hard layer, the truncheon may not root.
Thetruncheon should be planted into a narrow hole about 60 cm deep. The best time for this method is the end of the dormant season when the plant still grows slowly. This
method can be used with most trees which drip a white sap when they are cut."

Here is a link that might be useful: Vegetative Propagation Techniques
lucky_p
12 years ago
If rooting fails, grafting is pretty easy.
I routinely collect scionwood during the dormant season and store in the refrigerator, wrapped in damp(not wet) paper, in a ziploc bag, then graft onto seedling rootstock any time after the rootstock has broken dormancy. I use a simple bark veneer graft.
Have T-budded a few mulberries during the late summer, but it's been years.
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If you really like the fruit from this tree, grafting is the only way to fully duplicate the fruit in a new tree. Planting seeds and growing them can be fun and may yield some pretty good fruit, but there will still be variation in the trees grown from seed, so you won't be duplicating your existing tree. I have 2 apricots grown from seed. Both trees produced loads of fruit this year, one tree has fruit about 3/4", the other 1" to 1 1/4". One tree is completely freestone (the fruit even splits a bit at the stem end, open it up and turn it over and the seed falls out), the other partially freestone. One has relatively dry fruit, the other was very sweet and juicy. One tree clings onto the fruit until it rots, the other starts dropping while the fruit still has a tinge of green. Both have good fruit, one better for jam and the other good for fresh eating or canning, but they aren't the parent trees. At 25 years, your old tree really should have a pretty good life left unless it has disease problems, so it shouldn't need removal in the near future. You can have fun planting seeds (the seed is ripe before the fruit is ripe, no need to let it over ripen) and growing some seedlings, then if you want you can either let those grow to produce and see what you get, and/or you could graft from the old tree to branches on the new ones so that you have both the seedling fruit and the graft from the old tree, and eventually cut off the one that isn't as good. Grafts are also likely to come into fruit sooner than seedlings. Getting a known rootstock for grafting would allow you some control over final tree size and may have some traits that will add to the tree, but using seedlings as rootstock won't cost you anything and will probably produce a full sized tree unless you prune frequently.
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We do thousands of custom grafts a year - I'd be happy to graft the tree for you if you'd pay for shipping and rootstock. We buy the rootstock in massive shipments so its usually about $1 to $1.50 each. This year we are ordering in M111 but we do have a small amount of M7 avaiable. The M111 will produce a tree about 15 to 18 foot tall while the M7 would be more like 12 to 15 foot tall. The benchgrafts would be shipped for about $10 - so if you wanted 4 trees $16 should do it worst case. We would need several cuttings from last years growth - preferably about pencil size. My orchard phone is 9138936050 - wagonwheelorchard - Thanks, Rick
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I don't have any specific information about rooting mulberry cuttings, but if they root the way most other plants do, then this isn't a good time of year to take cuttings. Since you're in Oakland, I wouldn't imagine mulberries would be making new growth right now, so the youngest cutting you could take, from last year, would still be old. So I'd take the tenderest looking little piece I could find. I normally like to cut a sprig of new growth in the early summer, before it's hardened off. I try to get a good "heel" piece, that is, one that's wider at the bottom where it meets the limb than it is for the length of the cutting. I like to get a piece that's a little thicker than a straw, no thicker than a pencil. I immediately put the cutting in water, then trim off all but the top leaves. I "wound" the cutting at each leaf node by cutting into it deep enough to expose some of the inner part of the twig, but certainly not too deep. I also make cross cuts at the very base of the cutting - plants root better when they've been cut into a little. Then I stick a pencil or stick into some wet potting soil leaving a hole for the cutting, put the cutting into it, water it again to make the soil adhere around the cutting, then put it in a warm, humid place in the shade. I keep it moist but not soggy. Various plants take various lengths of time to root, some never root at all. I got a cutting of a passionvine that I really wanted in Florida in early winter, and it was way too cold root it outside. So I made up a rig on my stove in an old canning pot with water on the bottom that I'd heat periodically to give the cutting the heat and humidity it needed, and it worked! I now have a good rooting cutting of this passionvine - my husband really laughed at this! Sherry
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Comments (5)
happyhoe, that is a good question. I was trying to find a spot which would give enough afternoon shade for the tree to survive. The first Japanese Stewartia, I planted just over 10 feet from the east side of my house, died from not getting shade from the house soon enough in the afternoon. It was my hope that planting the next one so close to the north east corner of my house would solve that problem and provide the tree more afternoon shade. In that location it also received some morning shade from being on the west side of a fairly narrow canopied and still young 15 feet tall sumard oak tree. It was my idea that this second location chosen for the new Japanese Stewartia would still provide plenty of room for the canopy to spread; that is, except at the small area adjacent to the corner of the house, where I planted to simply prune back the branches if they did not on there own avoid growing into that corner of the house. Even so, our hotter than usual (over 20 days of triple digit temps) along with my lack of knowing that when planting I should have prepared a peat type acid bed for the tree caused this second attempt at growing this tree to apparently fail. In June when the leaves were still green with only slight browning on the edges of some of them, the flower buds dried up before they could develop to the point of blooming. Then by Mid August the leaves all turned a redish brown. The tree now looks either dormant or dead. I have not yet done a bark test to check for complete death. Hopefully, if the tree does survive until its winter dormant state, I will then be able to prepare a more acid bed somewhere more appropriate for the tree. You refer to it as such a large tree. In your understanding how large does this tree grow? Was I wrong in thinking that the tree's canopy spreads about 25 feet and that it can eventually, in the area nearest the corner of the house, be pruned to allow for it to clear the eaves of the house. Then again do you know something about the root system of this tree which would make it, being planted so close to the house, a problem for the house's foundation?
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User
12 years ago
I bought two branches from a mulberry this spring cut them into 1-3 foot long sections and just stuck them in the ground and kept them watered. Of the 8 or so 5 stuck so they root pretty easily.
sautesmom Sacramento
12 years ago
It depends on the mulberry type.

Albas I have heard are easy to root, but I have not personally tried.

I have tried over and over to root my nigras, without lasting success, although I have managed to get leaves and little roots on a couple when I treated them like figs. But then they died. But everything I have read says nigras are one of the hardest things to get to root. I have also heard you are not supposed to disturb the the rooted scions for 2 or more years, so maybe that's why mine died, because I kept checking on the root progress.

Carla in Sac
joeworm
Original Author
12 years ago
Thanks all.

I'll try some cuttings in the spring, see what happens.
SoTX
12 years ago
Mulberry cuttings are successful if you take a small branch with a heel (small piece of the larger branch). Air layering also works well.

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