Yesterday, we held our Steaming Stems session with mixed results. The weather was great: It was right around the freezing point, and the morning was bright and sunny. Later it clouded over but there were still a few sunny breaks.…
Category: Fibre harvesting
Steaming Mulberry Stems
It seems that last year’s intent to steam the bark off our mulberry stems for making paper did not amount to any action. There are some things that just don’t happen if all you plan is to do it when…
Mulberry damage
This weekend while mowing the lawn I found that several branches of my mulberry bush had bent flat onto the ground. Some still appeared healthy but others were wilted. It would seem that some animal had eaten all the bark…
It’s Not Dead Yet!
This post was written on January 31st, but for some reason I forgot to actually publish it! This year’s mulberry branch harvest has been sitting in a bucket of water to keep it fresh, but it has also been sitting…
2013 Mulberry Fibre Harvest
It was a bit late, but I finally got around to harvesting the stems off my mulberry plant for fibre. Over the summer we had been pulling off suckers so the stems grow long and thick with little side branching.…
Mulberry maintenance
As part of trying to get better fibre from my mulberry plant, this year I am trying to prevent the original shoots from getting any side branches. This turns out to require some persistence at pulling off the suckers—the new…
Early gardening
My rhubarb is once again growing amazingly large. This plant has a long history. I first met it in the back yard of the house I grew up in. When it was there it benefited from annual feeding in the…
2012 Paper Mulberry Crop
A few year ago, a mulberry plant started growing in my yard. According to my tree identification book, it is a paper mulberry, Broussonetia papyrifera. This identification is not definitive, since Wikipedia mentions a sticky sap which I don’t recall…
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