Mulberries were a joy to have around. We got them from the city prison grounds where prisoners grew them for sale as one of their training and rehabilitation projects for later life when they eventually leave prison.
We bought five seedlings at a height of one foot. We prepared holes for them and planted them. Since it was the onset of the rainy season, it did not take long for them to take root. They were pretty easy fruit bushes to manage and develop.
Within no time, they were very big bushes. While pruning them, we planted some of the stems by simply sticking them in the ground and they took root and developed very fast into big bushes. We did not have to go back to prison grounds to get more seedlings.
They fruited very easily too and we had two harvests every year: one after the long rains and another after the short rains. And the fruits also ripened very quickly. We saw the green fruits and before long they were pinkish and then dark red or blackish.
We ate the fruits and made juice out them. All the cattle we had loved the leaves and some of them even chewed on the stems or peeled the bark of the stems and ate them. When we did pruning that was often, nothing was wasted.
The only problems we had with them were weakness of the branches or stems. They snapped very easily during windy periods. Of course there was no wastage in this as the cattle got some feed.
Two, some type of big beetle loved the juice from their stems so much that one such beetle could gnaw on a stem just for four days and the whole stem was down. There was no wastage here as cattle again got some feed.
Thirdly, silk worms too loved this fruit and during fruiting time especially when the fruits were ripe, we saw lines and lines of span silk threads ready to be harvested or wrapped into spools.
Birds too enjoyed eating the fruits. But that was ecosystem-taking place in the case of the problems we encountered.