Mulberry Tree Planting Technique Tutorial: Detailed Guide to the Latest Planting Methods
The mulberry tree is sun-loving and slightly shade-tolerant when young. It prefers a warm, humid climate and is cold-tolerant. It is drought-tolerant and extremely tolerant of waterlogging. It has strong adaptability to soil, tolerates poor and mildly alkaline soil, and prefers deep, moist, fertile soil. Its root system is well developed and it is highly wind-resistant. It has strong sprouting ability and tolerates pruning. It also has a fairly strong resistance to smoke and dust. There are three ways to plant mulberry trees: buying mulberry saplings directly for planting, propagating from mulberry branches, and propagating from seed. The specific planting methods are as follows:
Mulberry Sapling Planting Method
1. On sloping land and semi-dry paddy fields, plant in flat furrows; in paddy fields, plant on raised beds. Before planting, dig the planting trench: mark out lines according to the predetermined spacing between plants and rows, then dig the planting trench deep, with a trench width of 30—50 cm and a depth of 50 cm. First dig down 35 cm, keeping the topsoil and subsoil separate in piles, then dig a further 15 cm deep within the trench to loosen the subsoil so that the mulberry roots can penetrate deeply. The planting trench should connect with the drainage ditches around the mulberry field so that water can be drained promptly after rain.
2. Apply base fertilizer: Apply base fertilizer at planting time, preferably organic fertilizer such as garbage, barnyard manure, or miscellaneous manure, at 1500—2000 kg per mu, and it can also be mixed with 50 kg of superphosphate. After the base fertilizer is applied, mix it evenly with the loosened lower layer of soil.
3. Trim the sapling roots: Before planting the mulberry saplings, prune off overly long and damaged mulberry roots, leaving roots about 15 cm long. Remove diseased and pest-infested saplings, and plant large and small saplings separately. Before planting, first dip the roots in a slurry of phosphate fertilizer plus yellow mud water to improve the survival rate.
4. Planting: Fill part of the topsoil into the planting trench to cover the base fertilizer, about 7—10 cm thick. When planting, first stretch a planting rope marked with the plant and row spacing, place the mulberry sapling into the planting trench, spread out the sapling roots so that the sapling is upright and the roots are extended, then fill topsoil over the roots, hold the sapling stem, and gently lift it upward a little so that soil particles fully fill the gaps around the roots. Pour on a ladle of clear water mixed with human and livestock manure, then break up all the subsoil finely and fill it into the trench, and firm it down. Generally, the planting depth should be such that the root crown is buried 5-6 cm. Then, according to the requirements for training the tree form, prune the sapling stem.
5. Watering and drainage: During drought after planting, water promptly; if water accumulates, drain it promptly, and replant any missing saplings in time.
6. Fertilizing and weeding: When the new shoots grow to 3—4 cun high, apply the first fertilizer, with 7-10 jin of manure water + urea per mu; when they grow to 5-6 cun high, apply the second fertilizer together with weeding, with 500-1000 jin of farmyard manure + 40 jin of compound fertilizer + 20 jin of urea per mu. Keep the fertilizer 3 cun away from the mulberry saplings to avoid burning them to death, and apply it deeply in furrows and then cover with soil. After the second fertilizing, you may spray a dryland herbicide such as Henaisi Dur once, but be careful not to spray it on the mulberry saplings; after 20 days, apply the third fertilizer, with 100 jin of bio-organic fertilizer + 40 jin of urea per mu. After this fertilizing, spray once with dimethoate + dichlorvos, at a concentration of 2 capfuls of dimethoate and 2 capfuls of dichlorvos per bucket of water for a knapsack sprayer. Do not spray other pesticides, so as to avoid poisoning the silkworms.