North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

["kieran or donna" <redherring@tnaccess.com>]

I just went back and looked at Lester's comments:
"the kaki will die and the native rootstock will survive and be heathy.  One
year later you can graft onto the rootstock and
the KSD will be evident by the time the scion reaches 12 to 18 inches and
again sudden death."

"I know of no one in the southeast, except Floridians, who have not
had trees to die of KSD."

If Lester would try digging some fine ground high calcium lime into the soil
around one of these "killer trees" it might be interesting to see if kaki
would grow on that one a couple of years later.   Conversely, if one of you
had a kaki that was doing well but you didn't like it very much, you could
dig some manganese and a lot of sulfur around it and see if it up and died.
The second statement Lester makes is interesting because my parents live in
Florida, and the soil is quite alkaline there, unlike most of the
southeastern US, and so Mn would not be very available at all.
    Just seems like a bit of fiddling around to see if KSD status can be
changed on a given tree.  Donna