Starting Our Mulberry Orchard

We are building a Mulberry Orchard 🌱🌱🌱! We hope to sell mulberries at our local farmer's market. We have been collecting and growing and learning about mulberry trees over the last few years and now we a establishing an orchard of 88 trees with 50 different varieties. We hope to learn best practices and what mulberries taste the best!
If you have any advice or feedback, please let us know. We'd love to hear from you.
0:00 Intro to the Mulberry Orchard
0:19 Propagating Mulberry Trees
0:39 Setting Up the Hoophouse
1:23 Converting Garden to Mulberry Orchard
2:15 Positioning and Planting Mulberry Trees
2:53 Amending the Soil
3:36 Choosing a Mulberry Pruning System
Here are some resources we wanted to share with everyone...
🎬Other videos you may like:
- Our 66 Varieties of Mulberry: • 100 Varieties of Willow
- Harvesting Willow as a Cash Crop: • Harvesting Willow as a...
- Growing Mulberry Trees in a Hoophouse: • 13 Mulberry Varieties ...
☀️About our Growing Zone:
Lopez Island is in the Maritime Pacific Northwest Zone 8A . Summertime temperatures rarely exceed 70F with occasional maximums in the 80s. Wintertime temperatures rarely go below 32F with occasional lows in the low 20s. Our farm is on a south facing slope at 220ft of elevation with unobstructed sunshine for the majority of the day.
🙏 Thank you
- Thanks to Midnight's Farm @midnightsfarmlopezislandwa895 here on Lopez Island for all the compost! The compost is all from recycled organic material here on the island. Such a fantastic service.
- Thanks to the San Juan Island Agricultural Guild FARM Fund for helping us to fund a hoophouse for part of the orchard. That extra heat will help the trees grow faster and fruit earlier.
📖 Here is the list of mulberry cultivars we have planted out in the orchard:
Australian x2
Beautiful Day
Big Red
Black Beauty
Black Prince x2
Boysenberry
Buluklu x2
David Smith
Delight
Dwarf Everbearing x5
Easter Egg
Firm Red
Four Seasons
French Syrian x2
Galicija x4
Girardi Dwarf
Grover's Best
Hicks
Hunza Black
Issai x4
Italian
Jan's Best x3
Kip Parker x4
Kokuso x2
Lakeland
Lebanese Heart
Long Red x2
Maple Leaf x2
Maui x3
Middleton
Miss Kim
Noir de Spain
Oscar
Pakistan x2
Paradise
Persian
Riviera
Rupps x2
San Martin x2
Shangri La
Shelli
Tehema
Thai Dwarf x5
Tice
Valdosta
Varaha
Wacissa
World's Best x8
Wellington
Wonderberry

[@oS3R0o777]

Thank you for bringing all of us along for the journey! I'm looking forward to January so I can buy some mulberry cuttings from you 😎👍

[@dingdongsgarden]

Hey. Thanks so much for your support! We’re going to prune these trees way back so they’re manageable. I’m happy we’ll be able to share the prunings with others! -Mark

[@DavidGaines26]

Thank you for sharing your mulberry fruit trees planting. We have been propagating mulberries for a couple sessions and waiting to plant in the ground this upcoming spring. We also make videos with our farm and hope to post new videos of the progress this week.

[@dingdongsgarden]

That's great. Thanks. Looking forward to seeing how your orchard works out! Our next step is pruning in a month or so. - Mark

[@thedivide3688]

Yes!!! ❤

[@dingdongsgarden]

Thanks. We’re excited too. And glad all the digging is done!

[@LittleJordanFarm]

👍🙌💚 I have native varieties. Very tall thin legged. I'm thinking of trying to dwarf some to see if they will branch out more closer to my reaching.

[@dingdongsgarden]

We’ve got some rangy varieties too. Other reasons we’re thinking about keeping them small is to keep netting as a future possibility… and avoiding ladders!

[@steveo_o6707]

I'm planning on growing one near my chicken run so they can have a snack when the part near the run drops. We'll be harvesting from it as well. Is there a real difference in taste between varieties? I grow figs and there are three flavors.

[@monicamayer977]

The electric company cut down mine.pist. had three different colors

[@dingdongsgarden]

That's tragic. Sorry to hear about this.