DryStoneGarden

black mulberry female flower

We bought a bare-root black mulberry for a client last week, but then wimped out and decided to hang onto it. We’d never planted one, they seem somewhat unknown in the Bay Area. The fruit doesn’t keep well, so it doesn’t show up in stores, and the trees need a good amount of space to spread their limbs and drop their fruit, more space than many people have in their yard, and more space, we decided, than our current client. The problem is that the fruit will stain anything it touches, so you have to plant them away from decks and patios and so forth, and the trees get big, thirty feet tall and wide usually, so picking the fruit isn’t always easy. The foliage is unspectacular, and the bloom is sort of interesting but un-showy. You plant them for the fruit, and hope they don’t end up ruining the carpet. 

But, the fruit, ahhhhh…the fruit. It’s like a sweet, musky, delicious blackberry. We once got paid to move a 24″ box mulberry for a client, because it was dropping fruit on the deck, and we had to pick (and eat) all of the fruit before we moved it. After tasting the first one, our eyes all got wide and we looked at each other, “We need one of these!” So we’re happy enough to keep one in a pot for a while.

Wildmanstevebrill.com has an entertaining website with info on the fruit and a number of other “wild” foods, some of which I’d never eat. Two different nurseries have told me they are selling a ton of bare-root fruit trees this year and it seems like there is a ton of online interest in edibles, so it seems, anecdotally at least, that the economy has people turning to the victory garden concept. I’m all in favor.

ryan 3/3