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jdlaugh

Mulberry Bonanza

jdlaugh
11 years ago

My neighbor in Tulsa has a mulberry bush that looms over the fence into my yard and it is really covered with berries this year. I was riding my bicycle in the neighborhood and saw another just like it completely loaded down.

Anybody else seeing a mulberry bonanza? Anybody do anything with the berries other than feed the birds? I ate a handful from my neighbor's bush and have the red fingers to show for it!

Comments (10)

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    11 years ago

    All the fruit trees and brambles here of every kind are loaded down with fruit. Assuming fruit pests or weather disasters don't hit, everyone who is growing fruit of any kind ought to get a great harvest this year.

    You can eat mulberries just as you would eat any other berry. Pick them, wash them, etc. and use like you'd use blackberries in pies, cobblers, muffins, etc.

    You also can use them to make mulberry jelly. The National Center for Home Food Preservation has recipes for making mulberry jelly using liquid pectin and using powdered pectin. I'll link one of those recipes below and the other recipe is available at the same website.

    The flavor of red mulberries and black mulberries is pretty good. I've never seen the white ones and never tasted their fruit, but it is my understanding that their flavor is not so great. I grew up in a neighborhood that had a lot of mulberry trees in the 1960s and 1970s and we kids loved them. When we were tired of eating them, we had mulberry fights where we threw them at one another....if you hit someone with an overly ripe berry, it went "splat" all over them. We were always mulberry-stained.

    Here is a link that might be useful: Mulberry Jelly Made With Liquid Pectin

  • shankins123
    11 years ago

    I have great memories of scaling a fence, and then up into a large mulberry with my brother. We'd hang a white sheet down below and shake the branches to gather the berries. Mom would make (usually) only one cobbler a season, as she wasn't too fond of messing with them! And...we didn't bother with trying to get all of the stems off; we'd bake those right in, too :~)

    Sharon

  • cjlambert
    11 years ago

    There's a tree on our street; some schoolkids gave me a mulberry this week, and it was wonderful, even unripe! There are scads on the tree and on the ground after the hard rain last weekend - or, when was that rain? The fruit trees and blackberries at the community garden are all loaded with fruit or flowers.

  • OklaMoni
    11 years ago

    Yes, and aren't they just delish?

    I had a friend over, and we got all the berries we could reach that day. I really need to go out, and pick more, before they are gone.

    Priorities... priorities... what to do first, and when....

    Moni

  • mulberryknob
    11 years ago

    Lots of mulberries here too and so many peaches that a branch has already broken. We just can't get them thinned fast enough.

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    11 years ago

    Moni, It is hard to find enough time to do everything, especially in a good fruit year....and the fruit doesn't last very long so we can't get behind on harvesting it!

    Dorothy, I'm glad I am not alone in struggling to keep up with the thinning. I tried to give myself a day off from the garden yesterday, but ended up spending a couple of hours thinning peaches and plums. In previous weeks I have thinned and thinned and thinned, but to look at the trees, you wouldn't know I'd been thinning all along.

    I thinned plums for about an hour, then Tim got up on the ladder to reach the uppermost branches that I couldn't reach on both the plum and peach trees. Last night I thought the trees looked pretty good, but noticed a few branches up higher where it looked like we hadn't thinned at all. How does that happen? So, today we'll be back up on the ladder doing those last few branches.

    Our old peach tree has borer damage and has just about had it, but two big limbs have a heavy load of peaches. We planted two new trees this year to replace it, but decided to let it live through this one last season since it had so much fruit. We cut away the dead limbs and it is all lopsided, but if it can carry this load of fruit it has now, I'll be happy. I am fearful the limbs will break because the tree is so weak.

    What a wonderful fruit year it is, and will be, if we can keep the hail and the pests from getting the fruit.

    Dawn

  • Macmex
    11 years ago

    We ordered and planted an Illinois Everbearing Mulberry, which is supposed to bear over a longer period of time than many other varieties. Even though it is still a little stick, it has some fruit forming.

    I grew up with both black and white mulberries. White was very sweet. But black had the better flavor

    George

  • scottokla
    11 years ago

    Funny this thread popped up today. Last night I was taking a walk through the trees and noticed a mulberry along the brushline that was loaded. I found 3 ripe ones and they tasted pretty good. That was the first time I ever ate one. I expected wildlife to get them all as they ripened, but no sign of wildlife there yet.

    I leave the mulberries in place as I clear more pecan bottom each year at the farm.

  • oklahawg
    11 years ago

    Are these the same mulberry trees that the birds have deposited along my fenceline?

    I have two that have grown VERY fast, produce large amounts of fruit and have branch structure that does not look very strong (as if a tree that grows this fast would be strong anyway). Methinks I am a good ice- or wind-storm away from a big mess.

    I couldn't be so lucky as to have a desireable fruit tree added free of charge to the landscape at my house!

  • Okiedawn OK Zone 7
    11 years ago

    I imagine so. There's several kinds of mulberries--red, white and black. Yes, they are weak-wooded as are most other fast-growers, but I don't think they are as weak-wooded as some other fast-growing trees that people plant on purpose for quick shade. The ones I remember from my childhood were easily 20-30 feet tall and produced well, and I don't remember any of them breaking easily. However, if you go back to that neighborhood now, none of those mulberry trees from the 1960s and 1970s are still there today.

    Birds plant these everywhere on our property and we leave them in the woods, but remove them when they sprout near the house or garden or if they sprout along the fenceline that runs underneath our electric line. Birds sitting on the power line plant lots of mulberries there in that spot.

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