My loot of mulberry cuttings.

Before you get the bush, you need the plant. Before you get the plant, you need seeds or cuttings. In this case, I had cuttings.

It was in late July when I came across a thread at the GCS forum about growing mulberry plants. I was captivated when I read the step-by-step instructions (with pictures) of what to do, from cutting to fruiting. Absolutely, positively captivated. It took all of two days of “should I or shouldn’t I?” before I put a request out on the forum for cuttings from anyone pruning their mulberry plant.

And it took less than an hour to get an offer from a generous forum member who, fortunately, doesn’t stay very far from me. I had four cuttings in hand, literally, before the afternoon was out.

Tip of mulberry cutting dipped in rooting hormone, poised over it's new home. It's important to have the hole in the earth ready; if you push the cutting into the soil, you'll remove the rooting powder on it.

Since I was out of potting mix that day, I stuck the cuttings into a rooting hormone solution after trimming off most of the leaves. Soaking them seemed to lessen their shock, because all but one cutting looked fresh and perky the next day when I was ready to do some potting. The leaves on the odd cutting were starting to wither, so I removed them since I could see newer leaves already budding out at the older leaf nodes.

The bottom tip of each cutting was dipped into more rooting hormone powder before I placed each into it’s new home for the next several weeks or months. After tamping the earth around each cutting, I watered them before leaving them in a shaded location where they’ll stay until they develop a nice, strong root system. As per instructions at the forum, they will be watered and otherwise undisturbed for a few months.

Freshly potted mulberry cuttings.

For now, it’s a practice in patience…

© 2010 curiousgardener.com All rights reserved.