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Post by heavyhitterokra on May 30, 2018 19:30:13 GMT -6
The dwarf mulberry tree that my youngest Son mowed down in early may is now coming back from the roots. It will be interesting to see what the severe pruning did for it. It is already as tall as it was before he ran over it with the mower, Except now, it looks like a mulberry bush rather than a tree. It came back with several sprouts and some of them have already reached 18" inches in height.
(I have it staked out with 4 posts this time, so everyone can see where it is.)
The idea of permaculture is one that I really like. I've got paper shell pecans planted everywhere I could find a place. I did have 50 apple trees, until the great grasshopper plague of 2012. They came by the millions and ate the bark off of my apple trees, killing all but 6 of them. For some reason, they left the peaches alone, as a result, I have several more peach trees than I do apples. I've also got plum trees, pear trees, two or three different types of grape, some blueberries, and a few pawpaw trees. It would be really nice to actually live long enough to eat the fruit from them someday.
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Post by rdback on Sept 25, 2019 17:59:27 GMT -6
Have a wild mulberry out by the garage. Here's my main competition for the berries. S/he showed up every day, around 1 o'clock, for a week. Stayed for a couple hours each day. I said "sure, go ahead, my friend".
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Post by macmex on Sept 26, 2019 7:22:10 GMT -6
Well, I hope you have success Ron. This year I repeated my grafting experiment. One of the grafted trees actually took, but it got overgrown by weeds before it showed signs of life. I only discovered it when I hoed out a patch of weeds. I found my grafting tape and wondered what it was. Then, looking more carefully, I found the mangled little grafted tree! It was too far gone.
So, I'll try again this coming year.
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Post by macmex on Sept 26, 2019 7:23:03 GMT -6
Love the raccoon photo! Can't blame them for taking advantage of such a delicious and prolific fruit!
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hank
New Member
Posts: 34
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Post by hank on Sept 28, 2019 16:58:00 GMT -6
The deer were the first to visit my new mulberry trees.
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Post by john on Oct 5, 2019 6:47:42 GMT -6
Rdback, Great picture! The mulberries must be really good if the raccoon couldn't even wait until dark to come get them!
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Post by john on Oct 5, 2019 6:50:14 GMT -6
It would be equivalent to a man waking up from his sleep at 2 a.m. remembering he had something good to eat in the fridge or cupboard and preparing himself a meal in the middle of the night. LOL
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Oct 20, 2019 17:12:30 GMT -6
Raccoons do crazy things sometimes. Josh and I caught 5 Raccoons in our corn patch in one day during the daylight hours last Summer. (Where were those things when I was coon hunting as a kid?) ... Back then, we'd be lucky if we treed one coon per season! Now, we see them lurking about when we're not even looking for them. I'll bet it has something to do with the bottom falling out of the fur trade back in the early '90s. When I was a kid, country folks skinned every coon they could lay hands on, for extra money during Winter months. Not to mention they are not half bad eating, if you bake them just right.
And I'm with Hank on the deer. I've had a mulberry tree out by my garden that that has been there since 2008 and is no larger than a wiener stick, because the deer won't let it grow more than a foot or so before they lop it off again. Those things must be like candy canes to a deer.
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Post by macmex on Jan 28, 2020 14:26:33 GMT -6
Well, I just did a blog on mulberries. The other day I saw a post by a wonderful Southern food historian, named David Shields. He promoted this new venture by Eliza Greenman, who is a kind of fruit explorer, hunting down old varieties of fruit. Anyway, they found a renowned, old Southern mulberry variety, which dated back before the Civil War. It had been used for producing food for hogs and poultry. I couldn't resist. I ordered a scion. Now I'm really going to have to learn my grafting! All this prompted me to do a blog.
Mulberries Feed You and Everyone Else!
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 3, 2020 10:13:32 GMT -6
I killed a rouge mulberry growing under a zip line once, using ice cream salt in summer, after we had made ice cream. That was pretty cheap tree-killer. I had cut that particular tree down several times using a chainsaw, but it kept coming back up from the roots. The salt cured that problem permanently.
Back in the early 90s, the Farmer's Co-op was selling pellets called, "Spike". Spike, was formulated for killing trees and cost about $60.00 per acre to broadcast through standing timber when needing to kill trees in favor of grassland for cow pasture. (They were all about killing trees back then; with several studies going on simultaneously, using things as radical as spreading fire through Red Cedars in Western Oklahoma, using prop wash from a helicopter equipped with a Napalm spray rig via 55-gallon barrel attached to the undercarriage. (Your tax dollars at work).
The only trouble with using Spike was that it was non-selective. It killed every tree that it came into contact with, so it was only used to wipe a place clean of any kind of trees at all, leaving no shade for your cattle. For that reason, we opted to use chainsaws instead. Our horses ate the sprouts that popped up from the stumps.
However, if a person had a fence row that they wanted to be clear of timber, a small amount of Spike might be just the thing? I don't know if they still make it though? I haven't had any trees to kill in the last couple of decades.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 4, 2020 19:09:17 GMT -6
Bon,
I first heard about SPIKE, at an OSU brush control seminar in 1991. I don't know if they still make that stuff or not? It was a pellet that you broadcast through wooded areas to kill timber in favor of pasture lands.
I found reference to it again today. Below, is the URL to a video, but the video seems to be geared more toward small or young brush and the herbicide used, is granular in size. The old SPIKE in the early '90s was a pellet size herbicide that killed full grown trees.
Keep in mind this is a non-selective herbicide that will kill every tree that it comes in contact with, so if you don't want all the trees dead where you spread this, you might rather use a foliar spray instead.
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Post by heavyhitterokra on Feb 4, 2020 21:16:54 GMT -6
Bon,
I'm starting a new thread under "Tips and Tricks" titled, "Herbicides and Insecticides" in case anyone has anything to add or detract from the subject, so we won't cause the Mulberry Thread to 'Drift' too far off course. I'll try to copy/paste a few posts from here to there, so it doesn't just seem to come out of the blue in its new location.
Ron
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Post by macmex on Mar 14, 2020 10:53:00 GMT -6
Yay! I took a chance and purchased one of those $10 pieces of Hicks mulberry scion wood. I did three different grafting projects with that material and the one I have on my sun porch, where it gets warm during the day, has sprouted! Looks like I'll get at least one out of the deal. I'm hoping for two. I had one damaged bud, when I was done, and tried grafting it onto the Illinois Everbearing mulberry in our front yard. if it takes, I'll at least have more scion wood next year. So far, I'm most impressed with bud grafting. It just "feels right." One cuts a flap of bark on the parent stem, peals it back, and inserts the bud. Putting the bark back in place with the bud making good contract with the cambium (inner bark), I then wrapped things on place with some electrical tape.
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Post by macmex on Mar 14, 2020 19:33:20 GMT -6
Oops! I took a closer look this afternoon and realized that those sprouts are NOT from my grafted buds. They're just natural buds on that plant. My grafted buds died Hopefully at least one of my other grafts takes!
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Post by john on Mar 16, 2020 16:37:52 GMT -6
I have been toying around with grafting apples for the past couple of years. I tried my hand at bud grafting late last summer, they all failed. I have had some good luck with the old fashioned whip and tongue graft if I can match the diameters of the scions to the rootstock. If I can't match the scions, the cleft graft works. I have had really good success with the cleft graft. I am still learning but it has been fun. It really does come down to experience. The more you do it the better feel you get at it. About ten years ago I started growing all my watermelons on Lagenaria gourd rootstock and interspecific squash rootstock. They are disease resistant and I have grown some really great crops this way. It took a while to really figure out what I was doing. Now I am pretty confident in my approach. That being said, One thing I have learned in life is to never get cocky or think to yourself "wow, I really have mastered this". In my experience a lesson in humility will soon be delivered.
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