Mulberry
Morus nigra
Generous old-garden tree dripping dark fruit the birds and bees adore.
- Type
- Fruit · Perennial
- Botanical family
- Mixed / other
- Foliage color
- Green
- Flower color
- Purple and violet
- Sunlight
- Full sun
- Watering
- Moderate
- Soil
- Deep, fertile, well-drained
- Feeding
- A compost mulch in spring; it rarely needs feeding beyond that.
- USDA zones
- 4a–9b
- Frost tolerant
- Yes
- Flowering
- May
- Pruning
- Prune only in winter dormancy, and cut as little as you can.
- Plant out
- at the last spring frost
- First harvest
- 90 days after the last spring frost
- Harvest ends
- 60 days before the first fall frost
- Apr–May Bud Break
- May–May Flowering
- May–Jul Fruit Set
- Jul–Aug Harvest
- Aug–Oct Growing
- Oct–Dec Leaf Fall
- Jan–Apr Leaf Fall
- Plant spacing
- 13 ft 1 in
- In-row spacing
- 13 ft 1 in
- Between rows
- 16 ft 5 in
- Square-foot density
- Not suited to SFG
- Root system
- Woody, shallow, wide and opportunistic
- Working depth
- 12–24 in
- Can reach
- 3.5 ft down where the soil allows
- Spread
- 69–92 ft across, about 3–4× the width of the plant
These roots go looking, and what they find is drains, soakaways, footings, paving and the border next door. Give it real distance from anything you would mind being lifted or blocked: the reach below ground is several times what the crown suggests.
Shallow, wide and vigorous, and quite capable of lifting a path or blocking a drain. Give it distance from the house, and remember the fruit stains everything under the canopy for a month each summer.
The habit is Mulberry’s own; the figures are what that habit usually comes to at this size, not a measurement of this species. Roots follow the soil either way: a compacted pan, a high water table or heavy clay stops them well short of any of it, and deep open ground lets them go further.
- When
- July–August in the UK; black mulberries (the flavor king) are famously slow — 7–9 years to real cropping from a young tree, though grafted and dwarf types fruit in 2–4 years.
- What to look for
- Berries at their darkest — black mulberries a deep purple-black, soft, and fall-apart juicy; they detach at a touch or drop of their own accord. If it resists at all it will be sharp. Whites and reds ripen paler but equally soft.
- How to harvest
- The traditional harvest: spread clean sheets or nets under the tree and shake the branches gently — ripe fruit rains down; hand-pick only what you can reach without squeezing. Wear old clothes: the juice stains indelibly (and so does the ground beneath).
- How often
- Every 2–3 days over a 3–4 week season; the tree ripens fruit in a long succession, never all at once.
- Storing the crop
- Almost zero shelf life — hours to a day at room temperature, 2 days refrigerated, which is why mulberries never appear in shops. Eat immediately, or freeze/jam/make mulberry gin the same day. Best eaten standing under the tree.
- Generally trouble-free No notable pest or disease problems when grown in the right conditions — one of the easy ones.
Comfrey, Chives, Alliums
Good neighbors
Silkworms eat only mulberry leaves — this tree built the ancient silk trade.
Green-leaved fruit, like this one.
The Cottage Garden Companion — the gardener's herbarium at cottagegardencompanion.com