Household Hints & Help

A fruitless mulberry is a male. Only the female mulberry trees bear fruit. Pollinators must carry pollen from the male to the female flowers or there won't be any fruit.

Trees produce tempting leaves in spring, which encourages pollinators. After blooming season, they produce tough, bitter leaves.

Birds won't eradicate the caterpillars, and probably won't eat as fast as you'd like, but they do eat them. That worm poop is free fertilizer -- it's a lot of stuff the tree is able to pull from deep in the ground that other plants can't reach.

Poison the caterpillars and you reduce the local songbird population as well as deplete the soil. That's without even considering the direct effects of the poison.