Mulberry Musings

We’ve all been there. We’ve all read the marketing blurb for a shiny new plant variety, and decided that we had to have it. We may have been good, and waited for a few days, to be sure that we really had to have it, but we’ve all paid money for brand new plant varieties for the garden. And then we find out that they don’t quite live up to the hype. You don’t hear about ‘early adopters’ outside of the tech world, really, but that’s exactly what we are, and a certain amount of disappointment is inevitable.

When my box of goodies arrived from Indigo Herbs last week, I knew what I wanted to make with them – a fruity tea loaf for Ryan. Ryan loves dried fruit, me not so much (although I am learning!), and he polished off my last tea loaf really quickly. I wanted to know what it would taste like with some less common ingredients – hemp tea, hemp seed, and dried mulberries.

I guess I am lucky to have 3 compost heaps and have had the ‘fun’ of emptying one over the last 3 days.  It would probably have been better compost if it had been left a few more months but the other 2 were full or filling up rapidly. I wanted to trench out the bean and sweet pea ground both of which should benefit from the moist compost at their roots. Another reason for action was created by corona virus and the cessation of garden refuse collections and closure of local refuse tips by our MDC.

WHEN I CAME UPON THIS IMAGE BY CHANCE the other day in the Library of Congress online photo archives, it stopped me still.

Well mulberry tree actually – after eighteen years it has grown so large that I will be asking the tree surgeons to give it a trim this year, about a month after leaf fall. Learn from my mistake and if you do plant one, make sure that it has plenty of room to grow in all directions and won’t be a problem if its branches start to droop towards the ground, which is its natural habit. Pruning it won’t do it any harm as the tree is relatively young and still growing vigorously, provided we don’t lop off any major branches – this can leave wounds that won’t heal properly. Pruning the tree will affect i

Mulberry Malady The mulberry has been dropping leaves, some have yellowed and the ends of twigs have withered, while the fruit is much smaller than that on other trees in the neighbourhood, so I’ve been in contact with the estimable Stephen Read of specialist fruit growers, Reads Nursery in Norfolk. It seems the tree is stressed – our dry sandy soil is not to its liking and I have compounded the problem by planting it on the edge of the terraced lawn.

All of my childhood summers were marked by lazy days in the mulberry trees, grabbing fistfuls of the tiny, dark fruits for hours of casual snacking.We link to vendors to help you find