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Quince and mulberry

Joyce GoldenlilyJoyce Goldenlily Posts: 2,933
in Fruit & veg
My mulberry has carried a few fruit this year after I thought it had died. It has turned from a small single stemmed tree into a multi stemmed bush so I am planning to remove some of the new stems and turn it back into a single stemmed tree. My main concern is it has died back to below the graft, I bought it as a dwarf black mulberry, Princess Charlotte I think. The nursery rhyme "Here we go 'round the mulberry bush" keeps going round in my mind. Not "the mulberry tree". Should it be left as a bush, easier to pick the fruit. The chef Hugh  Fearnley Whittingstall has a large mulberry tree in the centre of his vegetable garden.

It seems the second flush of flowers on my quince missed the wind storms and have set some fruit. It is almost impossible to keep the tree adequately watered for the fruit to develop properly but I am trying. I do not know yet if quince have a fruit drop period like apples etc. I will find out before long I suppose if they all drop off.
I live in hope I might have enough mature fruit to make a pie

Posts

  • thevictorianthevictorian Posts: 1,279
    I can't really help but we bought a mulberry a couple of years ago and it's a dwarf variety, supposedly getting 3x3m when mature. We are leaving it as a "tree" because that's a manageable size but I think if it's dwarfing then it doesn't make much difference to how much fruit you get, as you are just taking the trunks height out of the equation. We had a few fruits last year and they were delicious but this year there aren't so many. I think the mild winter and hot summer did it go but this year's cold winter weather did cause some dieback.

    I don't grow quinces so don't know if it's sound advice but a friend does and they summer prune the foliage, in the same way you would for apples, and reduce the fruits so the ones that remain get more sun and water. I don't know the variety but the fruits are absolutely monstrous.   
  • bertrand-mabelbertrand-mabel Posts: 2,697
    We have 2 quinces. One in the orchard and the other (the original one) in the main garden. Both flowered brilliantly this Spring. The orchard one has set no fruit while the garden one has but yes it has suffered with quince drop. Really bad this year. Watering? We presume so as the established trees in our garden are not watered. I keep hoping that since we have had some rain we will get some quinces.
    Mulberry...another story. We were given one that was awarded RHS Merit some years ago as a dwarf shrub. It has done really badly for us and the fruit (when we get anything) is small and tasteless.
  • Joyce GoldenlilyJoyce Goldenlily Posts: 2,933
    I had always pruned my quince in Jan. up until last year when I summer pruned it. Maybe that is why a few fruit have set.
    Mine is a variety  Varanja which is supposed to have pear shaped fruit but so far the fruit on my tree seem to be more apple shaped so again, I am wondering if it has been misnamed.
    My main problem is my garden is exposed to the SW so each year I have a lovely display of blossom which then gets stripped by the Spring storms we have down here in Cornwall.
    I have to agree, so far, the fruit from the mulberry have been under whelming, to put it politely.
    I will give it another year or two before deciding whether to bin it or not. The quince has saved it self so far because of the display of blossom each year.
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