Andrew Brown: Mulberry tree is a game of patience

Patience is a virtue. Which is probably why I've never had much of it. When I plant something I want it to produce results and quickly.
The mulberry tree needs time and respect before it will eventually bear fruit.The mulberry tree needs time and respect before it will eventually bear fruit.
The mulberry tree needs time and respect before it will eventually bear fruit.

The trouble is that this is very rarely the way things work in nature. As a general rule the quicker the thing grows the less tasty it is, the less attractive it is and the more difficult it is to manage once it has got itself established.

So I try and discipline myself to plant things that might take a bit of time to get established but will pay off in the end. Sometimes this works a treat. Like with my mulberry tree.

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I’ve had it now for five years and planted a reasonably large sapling but this is a tree that needs time and respect so I was fortunate to get a crop off it last year. It was less fortunate that the crop consisted of only three mulberries but at least I know the tree will produce fruit eventually. And I’ve also learned to leave the fruits on the branches until they are very nearly black.

When the berries first emerge all you see is a peculiar misshaped thing that looks like it is trying to become a blackberry. Gradually the fruit seems to swell and I discovered it had developed into a rather attractive red berry. I tried eating the first one and it was insipid and uninteresting in the extreme. So I left the next one much longer and got rewarded by a fantastic full flavoured fruit that augured well for the future. I hoped to save the third and most magnificent specimen to help explain to my wife why it’d been worth all the waiting. But a hungry bird got to it before I did and she remains sceptical.

Five years waiting for one quick taste sensation is not everyone’s idea of success but trust me this tree is worth it. The shape of the branches and the colour and texture of the bark are about as classy as you can get. Even when young it has a gnarled and weathered look to it that suggests it belongs in an English cottage garden. It looks like it intends to hang around for a very long time and establish a presence, which is what I hoped would happen with my walnut tree. I wasn’t daft enough to put that in my front garden as I have seen the final result of centuries of growth, but I did think I might get away with it on the allotment.

I inherited a couple of old apple and plum trees and I thought that if I planted a small walnut sapling then it could grow up into a mighty tree and gradually replace them. Which worked fine until I discovered how tasty the sapling I had planted was to the local deer which nibbled it so badly that the only thing surviving was a bare dead twig and some of the roots.

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I now have the sorry remnants surrounded by deer proof fencing, behind which are a few sprigs have started to emerge from the ground. All of which means that I now need to wait even longer for any grand result.

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