 by Chuck Marsh, UPN founder and horticulturist
There has been a many thousands of years old ongoing relationship between humans and mulberries. Much to our benefit I must say. In many ways, mulberry is one of the penultimate useful perennial plants. Not only is it a superfruit, loaded with nutritional goodness, the whole plant has served humanity in a multitude of ways for most of our cultural evolution.
I hope you all have relished a ripe mulberry fruit at some time in your life, because a good one has one of those savory fruit flavors that transcends its ripe sweetness and leaves you wanting more. This is a good thing, because mulberries are delicious fresh and you can expect large crops from your plants, even in small spaces when you grow them as multiple stemmed shrubs.
Check out our video on growing trees as shrubs where Debbie explains the details on one way to do this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TJQeNqwBls8 This method is a pruning intensive horticultural practice that confers a distinctive advantage for growing mulberries as shrubs: you can easily harvest large amounts of fruit standing on the ground. No climbing necessary. Or you can let your mulberry grow and become up to a 30’ or taller shade tree that you’ll harvest by laying down sheets under the tree and then climbing the tree and shaking it’s branches to send ripe mulberries plummeting earthward.
Full-sized mulberries make excellent lawn trees, where a closely mowed lawn at fruit drop time can soften the impact on these soft fruits and make harvest from the ground easier. Mulberries are best placed in lawns, shrub borders, pastures, forest gardens, or orchards. It's not a good idea to plant them where they will overhang parking areas, walkways, or outdoor paved surfaces. The purple fruit can stain cement and vehicles, and any birds around will be feasting on mulberries and dropping purple poop all over the ground under mulberries.
Some years when conditions are right, mulberries ferment on the tree and the birds get so drunk they just stagger around on the ground and can’t even fly. Makes me think about the natural fermentation potential for mulberries and good uses for damaged fruit.
Mulberry fruit is considered a superfood due to its nutritional density and high concentrations of anti-oxidants, polyphenols, anthocyanins, and essential vitamins and minerals, not to mention significant amounts of protein and healthy fats. Dried mulberries are delectably sweet and flavorful and far more nutritious than raisins. Traders on the Silk Road brought dried mulberries from China to Turkey, where they were a highly valued delicacy. They can also be made into a super nutritious health drink, or into preserves, syrups, or wine. The culinary possibilities are endless.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also mention some of mulberry’s other wonderful characteristics. The inner bark, young sprouts, and leaves are edible and have been used as famine food, when all else failed. I wouldn’t suggest you wait till there’s a famine to begin eating the leaves as a cooked vegetable. You can dry and store the leaves for later use. I recommend starting with younger, tender leaves and tips because the older leaves will be more fibrous, and in the case of the native red mulberry, the older leaves are possibly toxic. Mulberry leaves are rich in carotene and calcium and the dried leaves are exceptionally high in protein, containing 18-28.8% protein. The inner bark can be dried, then roasted, then stored or cooked to make an edible manna. The dried leaves are widely used for many medicinal purposes in Chinese Traditional Medicine, as is the fruit and root bark.
The inner bark of year old mulberry stems produces a fiber that can be woven into clothing. This inner bark can also be used to make strong, beautiful paper. The dense wood of mulberry trees is used for fuel wood, ethanol production, woodworking, and boatbuilding. The links at the end of this article will give you lots more information about this wonderful plant’s uses and nutritional and medicinal qualities.
Culture of mulberries is not difficult. It succeeds in a variety of soils, though it prefers warm, well-drained, loamy soils in a sunny spot. Mulberry will do as a forest edge tree, though anything less than full sun will reduce its productivity. Mulberries are relatively drought and wind resistant once established for a few years.
The best fruit producers are often inter-specific crosses of red, white or black mulberries. For best quality fruits it is best to choose a named variety that has been selected for fruit quality, productivity, a long production season, and disease resistance. UPN currently offers the classic mulberry hybrid that sets the standard for all others, ‘Illinois Everbearing’. We hope to offer an extended selection of varieties as we bring our propagation facilities on line.
It seems obvious to me that mulberry deserves to be restored to the upper ranks of the Useful Plant pantheon for our times. It certainly meets my criteria for a plant ally in our quest for liberation through abundance.
Here are those mulberry links:
http://www.usefulplants.org/berries/mulberry.php
http://www.pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Morus+alba
http://www.pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Morus+nigra
http://www.pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Morus+rubra
http://www.itmonline.org/arts/morus.htm | 
