Mulberries are a permaculture favorite,
and there are lots of theories zipping around the internet about how
best to integrate them into a homestead. When it comes right down
to it, all of the methods revolve around pruning — do you prune the
tree at all, and if so how?
Mark’s the one who
brought this issue to my attention, because he’s been watching our two
year old Illinois everbearing mulberry grow like a weed in the chicken
pasture all summer. “Do you think we’d end up with more fruits
for the chickens if we pruned our mulberry small and mashed a lot of
trees together, like in a high
density apple orchard?”
he asked.
I’m glad Mark raised the
question, because I’d been assuming we’d just let the mulberry grow to
tree size and do its thing. Various websites explain that it’s
not really essential to prune a mulberry tree, and I know of several
big, unmanaged trees that I stole fruits from as a kid — they seemed
to bear heavily.
Despite not needing to prune a mulberry tree,
there are various reasons you might want to. In permaculture
circles, lots of folks coppice
mulberry trees, using the wood and leaves as a source of organic matter
(and as fodder for herbivorous livestock). A
fascinating report by the FAO suggests that you get the
most leaf production if you cram mulberries close together and cut them
often — optimal spacing seemed to be 2 feet apart, with cuttings
every 112 days. This study was carried out in a tropical setting,
so you probably wouldn’t see the 8.5 tons of dry matter per acre here
in the U.S., but mulberries still might beat the average 3 to 5 tons
you’d get from a grass and clover hayfield.
Of course, as I’ve
mentioned previously, chickens aren’t really leaf-eaters. Another
study (included in the FAO report) found that you can replace up to 9%
of your chicken’s daily ration with dried mulberry leaves without
lowering egg production, but I read the same thing about duckweed, which our spoiled flock was
supremely uninterested in. Instead, I want to focus on fruit
production since I know our chickens will scarf down lots of berries.
Mulberries produce fruits on
last year’s wood, so straight coppicing is out if you want fruit
production. On the other hand, if you remove only half the
branches each year, your mulberry bush can produce fruits on the old
wood while growing new branches for next year’s crop.
For even more
efficiency, I’m considering pollarding, which is just like coppicing,
but keeps a trunk and three to five branch stubs instead of cutting the
tree to the ground each year. Annual pruning involves removing
the twigs on half of the the pollard stubs, while leaving the other
half to bear fruit. This way, I won’t have to worry about
chickens damaging the tender young growth that would come up from a
traditional coppice each spring.
What will I do with all
the wood I cut out? I plan to try rooting
hardwood cuttings
next year, which will let me fill the chicken pastures with little
mulberry bushes. Or so I hope! Stay tuned for more posts on
my pollarding and propagation experiments.
pasture keeps the flock spread out so they don’t scratch any one spot
bare.
Did you still get good fruit production pruning them smaller? I have a small yard in the city and would like to give mulberry bushes a try but I’m afraid if I keep them pruned at bush/small tree size (no more than 5 ft) I won’t get any fruit. My neighbor has a 35 ft tree and I’m going to take cuttings to root but I can’t have a full sized mulberry in my yard as it will completely cast my garden in shade.
Ally — We ended up getting quite a lot of fruits this year, despite the fact that I not only pruned the tree heavily last winter, I also picked half the tree’s leaves to feed silkworms. I didn’t pick the fruits — just let the chickens have them — so I don’t have an idea of quantity, but there always seemed to be at least a few fruits ripening up all the time. It’s definitely worth a shot in your small space, where any fruits are probably better than none.
hey there. i would love to hear any updates on this.
i currently have 25 red mulberry trees that i intend to plant in our chicken/duck yard. i am trying to determine the best approach. i am considering 3-5 foot spacing between trees and 5-6 feet between rows. i am also considering pollarding as opposed to coppicing so that new growth is not damaged by the birds. i intend to keep the area fenced off this year until the trees are established and inter-planting siberian pea shrub (i hear chickens love them as well) to help keep soil erosion down (lots of birds scratching in loose soil) and provide extra nitrogen (though the chickens will supply plenty) to keep up with regularly pollarding of the mullberries. i also intend to annually (likely in winter and then let the birds into the area late spring after the first chop and drop of the mulberries) lay down a think layer of wood chips, which will grow mycelium and house earthworms. i figure this will add much extra benefit for our poultry if managed properly. i intend to do the chop and drop pollarding as biomass reaches a good quantity, and dropping it directly between the rows. while i do not think the birds will eat the chop and drop directly, i think the active scratching they will be doing to find earthworms and mycelium in the wood chips will shred the leaves and they will indirectly be consuming it as they eat. at least this seem like decent logic – i cannot be sure, but that protein has to go somewhere right? where if not in the birds i wonder? i also think the chop and drop can be used to cover areas where they have exposed the soil from scratching, and keep the earthworm habitat good. as it decomposes and keeps in moisture it will also attract other critters for the birds to dine on. of course, i am also hoping to get some fruit, either for me or the birds, or both.
at any rate, this is the condensed version of a method i hope to get figured out in the next couple of weeks. i would love to hear anything you have learned that you think could be of use to me.
thanks 🙂
It sounds like you have quite an adventure planned, and I’ll be curious to hear how it turns out for you! Here, I’ve opted to stop pollarding our mulberry. Despite what the books say, I was getting a lot more fruits on older branches. So, in the interest of peak production, I’ve let the tree go to grow at its own pace.