Success Rates for Rooting Mulberries

We propagate mulberry trees to plant in our orchard and to sell locally. Since rooting success of mulberries can vary greatly between cultivars, we thought it would be useful to share both our success and failures.

Our data below is not scientific and we have experienced failure where many others have success, but we hope the information below will help you decide whether to root or graft. As we collect more data, we will update the list.

In general we root our mulberries in a peat/perlite mix in 9" tall pots. We use rooting hormone and wrap the exposed top in parafilm for humidity control. Put on bottom heat for two weeks without light. Attempts noted with an asterisk (*) indicate up to four weeks without light.

To learn more about what we are doing with Mulberries, please visit our Mulberry Talk series on YouTube.

And to see what mulberry cuttings we have available, follow the links below or visit our mulberry cutting page.

UPDATE: We are done with propagation for winter 2022/2023!  Our biggest lesson learned this year was to double the amount that our cuttings were in darkness. Instead of just two weeks, we extended the time without direct light to almost four weeks. Using this strategy we saw dramatic improvements in rooting success for Kip Parker and Illinois Everbearing. We will definitely be extending darkness across the board next year. 

Have a great summer!  See you later this autumn!