A nice, ripe mulberry just bursting with impatience to be eaten. I was happy to oblige it!
It’s been about a year and a half since I got my first mulberry cuttings from Chawanmushi – and in that time, we’ve harvested a grand total of three fruits. Yes, three. This was despite seeing several fruits that either aborted due to hot weather or disappeared via feathered thieves.
So it thrilled me to see several fruits growing once again a couple of weeks ago. That plant happened to get surrounded by the Brazilian Bachelor’s Button plant – or should I say, bush – so I was optimistic that the mulberries would be camouflaged by the wildly-growing bush.
Since mulberries don’t rank among my must-check-frequently plants, I forgot about the fruits until two days ago, when something dark caught my eye – a fully-ripe mulberry! Much photo-taking ensued, since this was a rare occurrence, and then came the grand finale where I plucked and ate the fruit. It was just as lovely as I remembered it tasting, and I still can’t wait for the day when we have enough of these little fellas to fill a bowl and eat chilled on a hot afternoon. That would be blissful …and far in the future, unless I go mulberry hunting.
The next bunch of mulberries currently ripening.
It’s a little funny in retrospect, how I thought mulberry plants were such rare and wonderful things, because now that I know what the plant looks like, I’ve realized that there’s a rather large bush growing in front of a neighbour’s house, and a small tree further away in the neighbourhood! I don’t know how many times I’ve walked past the tree without realizing it was a mulberry plant until – you’ve guessed it – the fruits caught my eye! I had no idea it could grow that big, and the tree serves as a reminder to me to try not to let our plants take root – but the pale, smooth bark of the plant makes it look rather pretty…
In the meantime, there is another cluster of mulberries growing on the same plant. With luck and bad eyesight on the part of the birds, I’ll get to eat more of them. 8)
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Congratulations! Once they start, you can’t stop them. Do Not fertilize. Apparently, fertilizing just means more leaves and branches, but not fruits.
For fruits, you must prune heartlessly – I prune every 2 weeks. Just cut off where the last fruits are. You will find new branches and new fruits within a week. Plant survival instincts.
Okay, I shall try to be more heartless. The plant is already in the neglected plant zone. My idea of letting it merge with other plants seems to have worked! *crossing fingers that the birds don’t hear me and now swoop down on the rest of the fruits*
From the Mother Weed: As per Novice Gardener’s instructions, I have pruned… not with the view of setting more fruit etc, but because the Weed’s fruitless (though enormous) bush needed to be trimmed to fit into the car. It is going to a home high in the sky where birds do not eat every single red fruit. We have a lot of birds in our garden.Enjoy the fruit and let us know how it tastes…
MW, it tastes like the Ribena drink – sweet and tangy! The taste has improved as the plants matured. When I tried the first mulberry, it was more bland. I really can’t wait to have an accumulation of them to enjoy!