Documentary updated 9/12/24: Zone 10A FL

This is an on-going documentary of my Green Pakistani Mulberry. Finally after tasting and trying to grow Dwarf Everbearing, White Mulberry, Thai Mulberry, Pakistani Red Mulberry, and Pakistani Green Mulberry trees, the winner and keeper is the Pakistani Green Mulberry.

Mulberry Varieties My Kids and I Tasted

• Dwarf Everbearing mulberry – common in Florida, dwarf tree size, fast growing, fruits in March and April, small size fruit, tart flavor, not sweet to me compared to other truly sweet mulberries, easily propagated by stem cuttings. If you are going for delicious sweet mulberries, I do NOT recommend wasting time growing Dwarf Everbearing Mulberry.

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• Thai Mulberry – fast growing, dwarf tree size, fruits in March and April, fruit size is bigger than the Dwarf Everbearing, about one to two-inches long, tart when not fully ripen, and medium sweet when ripen black, recommended for small gardens, easily propagated by stem cuttings

• White Mulberry – fast growing, mature tree size, fruits in March and April, low fruit production rate, size fruit about 1 inch long, very sweet – I got rid of the White Mulberry tree because it wouldn’t fruit for me within two years and it was an aggressive grower that requires constant pruning to maintain it in a 15-gallon pot, it grows like 10 feet a year, difficult to propagate by stem cuttings

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• Pakistani Red Mulberry – fast growing, mature tree size, fruits in March and April (to be checked), long fruit size that reaches to about 4 inches or maybe longer, very sweet, hard to propagate by stem cuttings

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• Pakistani Green Mulberry

Why I Chose to Grow the Pakistani Mulberry:

I had an opportunity to taste the Pakistani mulberry for the first time during a visit to Leaph’s food forest in West Palm Beach in 2021. His Pakistani mulberry was planted in a 15-gallon pot and the fruiting mulberry plant was pruned to a bushy 3-feet tall bushy mulberry plant with lightly green long dangling mulberries hanging on the branches. The mulberries weren’t anywhere near ripening yet at the time, but Leaph told me to give it a try. To my surprise, it was so so sweet! I can’t imagine how sweeter it can be once this mulberry fully ripens. Pakistani became my favorite mulberry variety of the four listed above. The only thing is that it’s a natural aggressive and fast growing mulberry variety. The Pakistani Mulberry tree can grow very big and tall fast. I do not have that space in my less than 1/10th of an acre garden. So I bought a Pakistani mulberry from Leaph and am trying to keep it in a pot and hoping it will fruit like it did for him in the pot for as long as I can. You can reach out to Leaph via Facebook Messenger app or on Facebook. He is the admin for the Florida Food Forest group and the Florida Tropical Fruit Tree Growers group. He does not give out his personal phone number or private address to strangers nor do I have the permission to do so.

Sunlight requirement: Full sun

Planting:

Spacing: When I toured my friend Shuja Haque fruity yard in Port St. Lucie, he has a Pakistani Red Mulberry tree planted within 10 feet from his surrounding fruit trees. He hard pruned it several times a year to keep his tree under 8-feet tall. If you are not going to prune to dwarf the tree, then plant it far away from your house, water lines, and give it 40×40 ft space because it is going to be a shade tree due to its vigorous growth rate.

Potting Mix: Mulberry trees in general strive in poor soil condition when planted in the ground. So any regular potting mix would make it happy, no need to add the fancy peat moss, extra perlite, crab shells, etc. Make sure the ground or planter has good drainage.

Watering: Both the Thai and Pakistani mulberry trees in my garden gets watered by the sprinkler system two to three times a week and with the rainfalls. I may sometimes give it a deep watering once a week for the potted Pakistani mulberry in the summer time.

Pruning: Leaph from West Palm Beach told me that the mulberries only grow on new growth. So it’s important to trim off the old branches at the end of the fruiting cycle to allow new growth to form for the next fruiting season. (Months of year for trimming and pruning my mulberry trees: to be updated.)

insert images of the before and after pruning for both trees

Propagation: It’s easy to propagate from stem cuttings for the Thai mulberry. It has been difficult to propagate the Pakistani mulberry from my failed attempts. Perhaps that is also why the Pakistani mulberry tree is twice the cost of the Thai mulberry.

For any other information about the Thai Mulberry and Pakistani Mulberry trees that I have not covered, please do your own further research. I just document enough information for me to remember and for my kids to learn how to grow their own mulberry trees.