Fruitless Mullberry trees declining after pruning?!?

[MattBanchero]

So I pruned three fruitless mullberry trees about 15 months ago and two of them have gone into steep decline. All of trees had extensive deadwood before being pruned. I sterilized my hand saw with lysol spray (which I've done since Sudden Oak Death arrived in our area). One of the trees totally died, one other didn't releaf except for very sparse growth on just the innermost branches. A third tree I pruned at the same time looks great. There were a couple other mullberries that we took just a couple broken limbs off of, and they look just fine.

Maybe it's the drought or a pathogen or the landscaper used too much roundup? Is there a time during the year you are not supposed to cut Mullberries? We pruned these trees on March 16th, 2020. I remember because it was the last project we worked on before the covid lockdown.

Now the same client wants me to prune a huge 36" dbh mullberry and I'm afraid to touch it. Advise or insults appreciated, I can take it.

 

[mikewhite85]

You should not prune trees during the spring flush but I doubt that's what hit them. Mulberries are generally very resilient as most of them in Socal are radically topped seasonally.

It's likely that the stress resulting from the pruning (perhaps overpuning) led to some other issue. Shothole borers seems to kill a tree in weeks and I remember them gaining a lot of momentum before I moved away from there.

 

[MattBanchero]

You should not prune trees during the spring flush but I doubt that's what hit them. Mulberries are generally very resilient as most of them in Socal are radically topped seasonally.

It's likely that the stress resulting from the pruning (perhaps overpuning) led to some other issue. Shothole borers seems to kill a tree in weeks and I remember them gaining a lot of momentum before I moved away from there.

It was basically a dead wooding with a bit of building clearance. It's pretty weird.