Hi I've recently bought a mulberry tree (bush) and planted it in my garden. It's about 6 ft high. I want to pick leaves off of it in the summer to feed silkworms. If I start picking the leaves will they just grow back from where I picked them or will they start growing from different places on the branch? Someone said that they take off whole branches as this encourages the tree to grow. This sounds like a bad idea to me but I'm not sure? There are some branches that appear to have broken off when it was delivered to me and it doesn't look like they're going to start growing again so surely taking off more branches wouldn't be good. Hope someone can tell me what the best way to go about this is. I don't want to end up killing the tree. I won't be taking all the leaves off of course. That would obviously be a recipe for disaster.
Picking rather than cutting would be less disruptive. Pruning does not result in size increase, quite the opposite. It does result in a different kind of sprouting than if there was no pruning, thus the mistaken impression that the plant is being invigorated or otherwise benefitting from hard pruning. Some familiar kinds of flowering shrubs may become twiggy with age, replace their trashy old tops with fresher- and more productive-looking sprouts if whacked back. Cutting away all of an old top at once with this effect in mind is called "renovation".
