Mac: The hoop house should be sufficient to keep your little grafted trees safe. That would be better than warming them up too much. Don Yellman, Great Falls, VA

Lucky,i am surprise at what you are writing. Asian do not need a lot of hours to start coming-out of dormancy,i believe around 200-300 hours. All my asians bought from edible landscaping in 2003 died,because of the rootstock allowing them to coming-out way too soon.Americans usely are much later. My 3 year old asian i grafted on my native do not need any protection. I high graft them at about 5 feet, mainly to start latural branches higher up,because of deer problem in my area(lots of them). I train my persimmon much like apples. I just cut the central leader after 3 scaffold laturals. I try to keep my tree,s at 9 feet.I am not that young anymore(73).Because i live in the Ozarks,hardwood leaves in the fall is the norm and my backpack leafblower get some heavy work-out.I leafblow all the leaves towards the orchard and than clean-up april 15 most of it. My paw-paw,s area get most of the leaves also my fig tree,s. I pile the leaves up high around my figs( I have plenty of them).

The leaf out time various on one's location and weather. Mine leafed out in late March but I had a mild winter at that time and I am way south of you. Expect leaf out by May, perhaps late May, at the worst. This is its 1st year so things may be off. Continue TLC (keep the soil as evenly moist as you can and keep it mulch all year around). Stems that do not leaf out by the end of this month may not do so. You can scratch the stems very carefully to see if you see green or not. Good luck and enjoy the fall foliage. Snow Queen is already blooming down here in the South. Pee Wee is close to opening the sepals. Ruby Slippers has two small blooms that look like they opened this week.

Here's a June Gold Peach as an example, planted two years ago. It was the first one I ever planted where I followed the "guidance" to cut a whip back fairly aggressively to promote lower branching. Unfortunately, all those branches were right at deer level, and the plant was eaten down to a twig. I thought for sure it was dead, but did some pruning "cleanup" to deal with all the damage, then protected not just the lower trunk, but also surrounded the tree with netting. Everything you see here is literally this season's growth. It has come back with a vengeance (though it has a much lower, spreading growth habit). Just based on what I've seen over the last four years (that is the extent of my fruit tree growing experience), barring any unforeseen catastrophic events, I think next year will be its big year- where it reaches substantial size and durability to be truly viable as a food source. It should put on a fair amount of height, and start to catch up with its brothers and sisters. I've learned that backyard culture doesn't really work well at my location- bears and deer. To have a fighting chance, they have to be nursed to a certain size, and there's a commitment of time and effort involved. That said, I have acres to work with, and live in the sticks. I've done some summer pruning on this one as well, mostly to try to open it up as much as I can, and position it well for next season. Glad I'm not the only one who has this fruit tree bug.