Mulberry planting gender dilemma

An individual mulberry tree can have only male, or only female, or both gendered flowers. Several nurseries that sell seedlings suggest that I plant five of them to make sure that I eventually (5-6 years later?) have fruit. The way I have been planting fruit trees doesn't make this practical. I have enough land, but it's covered with brush, which I have to clear, then I have to amend the soil, and then fence the trees to protect from deer. That is a lot of work to do for 5 trees when I really want only one fruiting tree.

Alternatively, I can buy one dwarf self-fertile Everbearing Mulberry that will fruit in 2-3 years from Stark Brothers for around $70-90 (counting shipping; depending on if they are having a sale). That seems excessive for one tree.

Are there any other alternatives? Am I thinking about this the right way?

You are living within a mile of probably a hundred mulberry trees right now. I say this as someone who goes through Broome County NY fairly often.

If you know what a mulberry tree looks like you will notice them everywhere. They are common along roads, trails, farms, suburbs, anywhere. In June they will be dropping gazillions of fruits everywhere. The road will be stained purple under them, etc... So spend the next few weeks, while the leaves are still on, and identify several trees. (It is easiest with the leaves on). Make certain that you know exactly which trees they are so you can still find them when they lose their leaves and go dormant. Then take cuttings of them once they go dormant (that is the best time for cuttings). Carefully label each cutting with the location of the source tree from which you cut it. Then get them rooting over the winter (mulberries are among the easiest to root).

Then next June when the trees start dropping fruit, visit each of your source trees from which you took cuttings, and make a note of which trees are fruiting. These are your females. Go home, check the labels on your rooted cuttings, and save the one(s) that came from a female. This way you are taking the cuttings now (well, soon anyway), rooting them all winter, and by the time you are seeing actual fruits on the trees you ought to have several well-rooted cuttings ready to transplant. As long as you are good at labelling your cuttings and remembering which tree you cut them from, it will just be a matter of visiting the "mother/father" trees next June to see which ones are female. Toss out the cuttings that came from males, and plant the best looking, strongest female(s).

If it just happens that all of your cuttings came from males, just keep driving around until you find a fruiting female (do it in June and you will find one). This will mean it takes you an extra year to get the right cutting, but mulberries grow pretty fast.

I hope I am making sense.
This method is free
This method does not rely on shipping a young seedling in a cardboard box around the continent
This method virtually guarantees you get a female (if you take cuttings from several trees and successfully root them. Just keep your labels accurate and are careful to visit the source trees during fruiting season)
This method lets you choose a variety of mulberry that is already growing productively in your neighborhood

This method will not work if you are hoping for a specific kind of "brand name" mulberry, but it will be fine if you just want a general "wild" one.

Obviously get permission from the landowner before taking cuttings if they are in someone's yard.

Good luck
Edited for spelling

you could plant clusters of several seedlings in one spot and thin down to the females when they show themselves if you’re trying to save clearing labor.

T S Rodriguez wrote:You are living within a mile of probably a hundred mulberry trees right now. I say this as someone who goes through Broome County NY fairly often.

If you know what a mulberry tree looks like you will notice them everywhere....

Thank you very much for your detailed post. You've inspired me to start looking at rooting videos!

greg mosser wrote:you could plant clusters of several seedlings in one spot and thin down to the females when they show themselves if you’re trying to save clearing labor.

Great idea! But one thing confuses me - at what age/size do they fruit? How much space would I need to plant 5 seedlings so they can get to fruiting size? I'm looking at videos (about rooting, which is not what we're talking about here) and I see fruiting mulberry plants only several feet tall. But the website of a nursery that sells seedlings (https://www.mehrabyannursery.com/shop/mulberry-trees/mulberry-tree/) says they can take 8 years to fruit, by which time they would be pretty big I'd think.

here, our wild mulberries (M. rubra) start fruiting at 6 or 7 feet tall. the clusters would be pretty bushy and gnarly at that point, but it should still be easy enough to tell what’s what.

i'm seeing wild seedlings from bird droppings (rubra as well as white) get small fruits in the second or third year, they're practically whips, maybe 5-6 feet tall. But we're talking 3 berries, not a lot but just enough to know that they are capable of making fruit.
I bought trees from the garden place and they got fruit in the third year after i put them in the ground and they were probably 3 when I bought them. Took me 4 years to know for sure that I had one male tree (I gave it extra time just in case there were some female areas, but it turns out there aren't).
I still think TS Rodriguez is on the money with cuttings. You'll know what you're getting and it will take about the same time.

Here's a very belated update on my effort to grow mulberry trees from locally (Broome County, NY) obtained cuttings. I collected hardwood cuttings from a couple of healthy trees from a neighbor. I put them in potting soil. The leafed magnificently, but not a single one of them rooted. I probably had 20 odd. Moral of the story is that it very much depends on the variety of mulberry. Some root easily, some don't. See Akiva Silver's experience: https://www.twisted-tree.net/propagating-mulberry-trees

Shayok Mukhopadhyay wrote:Moral of the story is that it very much depends on the variety of mulberry. Some root easily, some don't.

That was my experience. I thought I'd just done it at the wrong time.

However, what has been successful with M. alba, is to take a branch that's near enough the bottom to bend it and feed it through a hole cut in the side of a #10 pot and out the top. I bury the pot half way down in the soil and let them sit that way for 2 years and if it seems rooted, I cut off the branch and leave it another year before disturbing it and transplanting.  This is partly because I'm really in a marginal climate for Mulberries, and we are too dry in the summer so they tend to struggle.

Is there a way to tell male and female flowers apart? Some plants flower before they form fruit.

Grafting female scions onto your planted rootstock could also be an option. I believe Burnt Ridge sells mulberry scionwood.

Ben Zumeta wrote:Grafting female scions onto your planted rootstock could also be an option. I believe Burnt Ridge sells mulberry scionwood.

This was going to be my suggestion! I've bought scions from both Fruitwood Nursery and Really Good Plants (Marta Matvienko).

Another option is to look at this list of how easily each cultivar can be rooted, and order scionwood of those cultivars easiest to root. I've successfully rooted a few cultivars of mulberry scionwood, such as Galicia from Marta.