Description

‘Rosie’s Giant’ Mulberry is one of our own selections. There is a post dedicated to it on the blog.

The primary motivation behind selecting Mulberries in our area is not only finding good tasting fruit but also old trees thriving on neglect and with potential nematode resistance.

Specialty Mulberry cultivars are difficult to grow in our area on their own roots, grafting these onto appropriate rootstocks allows for better survival rates and yields. Finding locally suitable Mulberry rootstocks can enable growers to avoid nematode damage and thus success at growing specialty varieties.

Rosie’s has an excellent firm fruit, it does not bruise easily and is very flavorful with a nice tangy zing that makes it fun and cravable. The fruit is thumb sized and the mother tree fruited abundantly. The other advantage of Rosie’s is it has proven to be nematode resistant in our plantings, it serves a double purpose: a great tasting fruit and rootstock suitable to our area.

We have discovered through our own experience in 2023 and 2024 that Rosie’s is flood tolerant and also saltwater flood tolerant which can be incredibly beneficial for growers in flood prone areas.

The ‘Rosie’s Giant’ original tree was located at the corner of US Hwy 41 and Alice Ave in Gibsonton, Florida. Rosie owned a tire shop on that corner, which she sadly sold in early 2024. We know she had been wanting to sell the property for a while, as her family tire shop business was dwindling. We do not know much about Rosie herself and only spoke with her a couple of times. What we do know from countless trips up and down that road is she had many friends and acquaintances in her neighborhood that kept her company at the shop and stopped by to chat. The new owners of US Hwy 41 and Alice Ave corner cut down the ‘Rosie’s Giant’ Mother Tree in the spring of 2024. We believe they had no idea what the tree was and might have even thought it was dead because it was leafless at the time.

6 Cuttings 7″-10″