On 22/10/2015 9:59 PM, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Thu, 22 Oct 2015 08:45:24 +1100, Fran Farmer
wrote:

On 20/10/2015 6:20 PM, Chris Hogg wrote:
On Tue, 20 Oct 2015 10:49:44 +1100, Fran Farmer
wrote:

I'm in the southern hemisphere and enjoying a glorious Spring. For the
first time, my mulberry his covered with tiny fruit.

I've never managed to get a crop from this tree before so can anyone
give me any advice in how I can go from the tiny forming fruit through
to bringing home a mother lode of fruit at harvest time? It's a black
mulberry just in case that is important.

I only know a very few things about mulberry. Black mulberry does take
quite a few years to reach fruiting age, but now it's started it
should be OK in years to come.

That makes sense given the age of this tree,

The juice of the fruit from black
mulberry is the most staining of all staining things. It stains your
hands, your clothes, and if you get fallen fruit stuck to the soles of
your shoes, it stains everything you tread on, like carpets. But the
fruit is delicious. Silkworms only eat leaves of white mulberry, not
black mulberry. Mulberry trees were imported into the UK in the 17th
century, with the intention of producing silk to compete with silk
imported from China. But they imported black mulberry, the silk-worms
didn't thrive, and the scheme was a failure.

Cultivation notes here https://www.rhs.org.uk/advice/profile?pid=642
and more stuff here http://tinyurl.com/nwvxoj8

Thanks for the links Chris - they seem to be useful. And just for info,
although I too have read that silkworms will only eat white mulberry
leaves, it's not true. I raised a batch of silkworms through all stages
from eggs to death and then to rehatching the following year on the
leaves of my black mulberry. I lost that next lot when house sitter
used fly spray in the house after I'd told her specifically not to do so.

Quite why the UK silkworm project failed, I don't know. Even history
may not recount. Perhaps the worms just weren't productive enough, or
the quality of the silk thread was poor.

I've read exactly the same thing about the cause of the failure being
the black leaves too, but never gave the failure another thought formt
he moment I foudn out they would eat black leaves. I don't think I'll
revisit the subject though a mild re-piqueing of interest based on your
comments :-))

Like Janet, as a child in nursery school, circa 1950, we raised
silkworms, but on lettuce leaves, which they might have eaten in
desperation, there being no mulberry available, white or black. I
don't ever remember seeing cocoons though. I suspect term ended and
our teacher just threw them out!

I'm surprised to see silkworm eggs are still available. Perhaps I
shouldn't be, bearing in mind that almost anything is available on the
net these days. http://tinyurl.com/o3y4orm

I think it's still something that primary school children do on a
semi-regular basis. Certainly I got my eggs from a former school
teacher who got her original eggs from a still working school teacher.