It sounds like he has scionwood from everything, but that's rough to lose all those established trees. Basically starting over, can't imagine how that feels.

Hopefully the hybrids survive, I want to order some from him next winter.

Ouch what bad timing for him. And for all of us, he was building up one awesome collection of kakis.

Scott

If there was any snow cover above the grafts, the damage might not be so bad. I had a single kaki freeze to the snow line last year but had over 6' of growth from shoots that came from above the graft and below- almost collectively as many leaves formed as would have come from the undamaged tree.

This year it will probably not come out of dormancy again where its been exposed to our lowest temps, but I piled soil against the trunk last fall to make sure to keep it alive if we had another cold winter. It's -6 as I type this in SE NY.

Kakis just can't take test winters in Z6 or colder, even if our TW's have become milder. I have one of England's new varieties in my well house, so he will be able to retrieve that one from me if he finds he's out of wood. At the very least his frozen trees will sprout shoots from the roots and he will be up and harvesting again in 3 or 4 years if he still has the heart for it.

Farming is a tough business. Good to have an alternate income when you have a small farm, that's for sure.

A week or two before the first below 0 days hit, I piled woodchips against the trunks. Hopefully that will give me the same protection as snow-pack (which we didn't have at the time).

Since then, we've gotten down to -8, so it will be interesting to see what's survived of my 4 Kakis. One (Izu) is close to a tall South facing wall, but I'm not sure that will be enough. Another (IKKJ, a small one) was buried in snow before the coldest temps hit, which I think should protect it. A 3rd (and largest, Tam Kam) was covered in a tarp, while the 4th (IKKJ) was unprotected. The 4th died back to the rootstock last year anyways, so I suspect that the re-growth is not kaki and thus hopefully pulled through, so that I can graft to it this spring.

I got hit hard by the low temperatures last year with lost grafts and severe dieback, so this year I tried to protect everything vulnerable using tarps with various types of heat sources. I left one Sheng unprotected as a control to see whether these efforts make a difference. Various mishaps did occur (part of the learning curve) and the trees still all had exposure to -5F, which in the past has not been a critical temperature. The setup really wasn't so bad - about 1/2 day with an additional half hour here and there with each new blast of Artic air. The thought had been that I would need to do this every 10 years or so, which has been the frequency of having really damaging temperatures here, though I've used it four times this season. But it was so easy that I'm considering using this setup maybe as an annual early winter chore to protect things like figs and poms. Once everything needed is dedicated and organized and ready, the setup should take very little time and moderate effort. Key is to plant the trees in a configuration so that several trees can fit under one tarp and require one heat source and one wire. Forecast -9F tonight which will require about 30 minutes to set things back up.

Well, as a gardener, we all know that extreme weather can certainly happen, once in ten year event, or once in 20 days event. Weather has been to extremes recently.

The best way is prevention. We should all be prepared to lose a couple of trees, or lose a year's crop. But for business, more planning is involved. Or just leave it to mother nature.... It is part of the business. We certainly feel the pain when we lose some trees that we have worked to hard to protect.

I do not know what to expect at this point. I did not lose any trees last year. But I did not see any fruits either.