Summer tips for growing mulberries in your garden: planting, care, reproduction and pruning of a tree. Video with practical advice from experienced summer residents. Many novice gardeners are wondering: how can mulberries be grown? Proper care is also important. What do you need to know to get a good harvest of delicious berries?
Mulberry, or mulberry, is a deciduous tree of the Mulberry family. Many interesting facts are known about this tree. Since ancient times, it has been cultivated as a medicinal and valuable fruit plant. The foliage was used as a "food product" for silkworms - the very caterpillars that are "engaged in the production" of thin and strong threads of natural silk. Today, this plant continues to attract widespread interest among amateur gardeners and landscape designers. Depending on the species, white mulberry is used as a fruit plant and for feeding silkworms, while black mulberry is grown mainly for tasty and juicy fruits. They got their name not from the color of the berries, but from the color of the bark.
Read about the beneficial properties of mulberries and harm to the body
Mulberry begins to bear fruit by the age of 8-10. Before choosing a planting material, you should understand its types. So, weeping reaches a height of 5 meters and has thin branches drooping to the ground, which makes it different from others. It is bred with horizontal layers. There is a mulberry with a pyramidal crown, and there is a decorative spherical, with a neat and dense round crown. There is a tree with fairly large leaves (up to 22 cm in length) or golden shoots.
Growing a mulberry tree:
1. Landing
Mulberry is suitable for well-lit places, protected from cold stagnation. It would be ideal to set aside sandy loam, sandy or loose loamy soils for planting. Young seedlings are planted either in early autumn (September - early October), or in April. The planting hole is dug 80x80x60 cm in size. It is sprinkled with fertile soil, compost or humus in combination with complex fertilizers. Saplings are planted in the center, spreading the roots, then sprinkled with earth and tamped. Finish planting with abundant watering (one bucket) and mulching.
2. Tree care
Abundant watering is required during the period of active growth, especially during bud break. It is also important to feed the plant. For example, fermented slurry or bird droppings mixed with water in a ratio of 1: 5 and 1:10. Top dressing stops from the beginning of July and the plant is now watered only in case of severe drought.
It is imperative to remove weeds around trees and keep the soil loose.
3. Reproduction
Mulberries are cut, planted with seeds, separated from the mother tree. Reproduction of decorative varieties is carried out by grafting on seedlings.
If you decide to propagate by seeds, then it is advisable to use the seeds of the current year. Peel them from the pulp and can be stored indoors at room temperature until planting. The seeds are sown in February, but before that they are soaked in a special solution - a growth biostimulator for a couple of hours. After that, they are slightly dried and sown in a nutritious soil, then sprinkled with soil by 1 cm. The temperature in the room should be from 20 to 22 ° C. Seeds, as a rule, give strong and friendly shoots. After germination, the seedlings are placed in another place - more illuminated and with a temperature of 16–20 ° C. In April, they are planted in a school garden bed, filled with fertilizers in the fall. During planting, there should be 5-6 meters between the plants.
4. Pruning
Typically, the mulberry does not need formative pruning, it is only necessary if it is necessary to give the crown a cupped shape. The tops of the main and other shoots are cut to restrain the growth of the tree. However, for cold regions this happens by itself by freezing the upper shoots and the appearance of root shoots, due to which a coppice bush is formed.
For trees from warm regions, sanitary pruning is carried out every few years. If there is a risk of freezing of the shoots, pruning is carried out every fall. The same applies to old trees, the fruits of which begin to shrink.
