I'd prune them back low if there seem to be good buds below 15-18 inches. When in a pot I like to start them low because you already have the height of the pot to deal with. After that when the branches start to get leggy at about 24-30 inches growth, I pinch out the tip. If you don't pinch the tips the limbs will be flopping over on you. The resulting branches usually have very tight crotch angles but save the best one or two and repeat next year. From there summer prune to buds growing in whatever direction you need. If you want more branching head back in the dormant season. Otherwise summer prune to control tree size.

You can hold the trees to about 7-8 ft tall including pot and 5-6 ft wide without too much trouble.

Pruning the roots every year is key to keeping the trees small. Combine that with pruning the upper half of the tree.

I once saw someone opine that trying to train/control Illinois Everbearing with pruning was like trying to control a firehose under full pressure.
I'm sure it can be kept small with CONSTANT pruning and perhaps regular root pruning may help, but it is a very vigorous selection, and if left to its own devices, will become a VERY LARGE tree.

"I once saw someone opine that trying to train/control Illinois Everbearing with pruning was like trying to control a firehose under full pressure.
I'm sure it can be kept small with CONSTANT pruning and perhaps regular root pruning may help, but it is a very vigorous selection, and if left to its own devices, will become a VERY LARGE tree.

That's what I was thinking but I'm only familiar with the wild ones but they grow like weeds. Even salting the earth only stops them for a while.

#1 tip on keeping the trees small, don't pick a vigorous tree that's supposed to get 35' tall.

I haven't grown Il Everbearing in a pot but have Pakistan. The later was surprisingly well behaved. In a pot you are using the small volume of soil to, in effect, prune the roots. Letting it become root bound in the pot will likely have more dwarfing effect than root pruning.

You can keep Il Everbearing small in a 15 gal pot. Water once a day or less, keep it from rooting out the bottom, and it will have no choice. The real question is whether it will bear with the various stressed imposed.

If IL Everbearing is anything like what grows wild here I used to pick them from horseback.

In addition to Bonzai in a pot I was wondering about pruning to create a Mulberry bush. That's what I create when I cut the wild ones off at the ground, although they don't bear until they are quite large. I cut a small tree out of my lilac every year and have never noticed it bearing fruit. The "bushes" in my fence and along my foundation never bear.
The smallest I've seen bear is on the neighbor's and it got up to the powerlines before I hit it with a pole pruner.
I can't say I've ever seen a wild "mulberry bush".

Also how about trunk girdling?

Because mulberry bears fruit on the current season's growth, it is a candidate for pollarding. With this technique, you let the tree form scaffold branches in the height range and length you prefer. At the end of each season, you prune off all the new growth. The following year it sends out new branches which bear fruit, and at the end of that season, you prune off all the new growth, and so on and so on.

I don't have experience doing this, but each year I think about planting one :)

Another option is to get a "Geraldi Dwarf" mulberry, which reportedly gets to 7 or 8 feet tall. Mine is a few years old, and about 3.5 feet tall.

For the long term, learn about root pruning if you're going to keep an IE mulberry in a pot. As time goes by, a higher and higher percentage of the roots in the pot will be the thick woody roots that are not so efficient at absorbing water, and use up space so there is less and less potting mix. In other words, as the years go by, there will be less room for soil to hold water and the tree will become less able to absorb water, resulting in a tree that is very finicky about watering. If you prune off some of the woody roots periodically, you can keep the tree healthier, and probably more productive.

Alex

I've seen 40-50 yr old Illinois Everbearing trees that were easily 40+ ft tall, and two people, with outstretched arms, could barely touch hands around the bole of the trunk. It's vigorous, to say the least, when planted in the right spot.

Thanks for your help.