Deer in the Mulberries

[Dan O.]

The deer are picking up the early ripening apples and make a side dish of the mulberries and the mulberry tree leaves. This is less than 100 ft from my house. Mulberries appear to be an underutilized crop for wildlife. They're pretty well disease free, grow fast and except for the deer eating them to the ground I haven't had any trouble growing them.

Dan O.

[farm hunter]

Hi Dan -

How big do Mulberry trees get? Are they a shrub or tree? There is a tree in my yard that gets a blackberry type fruit - but its big - maybe 30 ft tall. The leaves are amost Shiny, and it is always the last tree in the area to get leaves. The neighbor said it was a mulberry tree???

FYI - Super Apple year here this year as well!!!

[Dan O.]

I've seen them about 30 + ft tall. Usually they take the form and size of an old standard apple tree. If there's one downside to them it's that the leaves and fruit are so heavy that the branches weight down and break. I even have a summer resident that trives on them, "Wilbur" the groundhog moves from his normal hole to the crawlspace under my sauna. It's only a few few from there to a steady diet for 1-2 months of all the mulberries that he can eat. Of course Wilbur isn't quite as famous as the groundhog near my hunting property "Wiarton Willie". He had a pretty good weather predicting record until last year. He was soooo wrong that they were talking about roasting him.

Dan O.