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[Jwlehman@aol.com]

In a message dated 5/4/2008 10:50:49 PM Eastern Daylight Time, r.fred.bruns@gmail.com writes:

> Like Jerry, I live in Zone 5b, and with one exception none of my Kakis has lasted more than a couple of winters.
>
> The exception is Yamagaki, [D. kaki] which has survived six winters now.  The name means "mountain persimmon", so it may come from a colder environment than other kakis.  It lost most of its new growth the first winter, but in subsequent winters it has had only mild tip damage.  Every autumn there seems to be a race whether the new growth will harden off before it gets damaged by a hard freeze.  The last several autumns have stayed mild for a long time, so my tree may have been lucky the last few years.


With this in mind, a few times I stripped several of the kaki seedlings here of their leaves early Oct. trying to throw them into a dormant condition earlier. The hope was to dehydrate them sooner lowering the cell moisture content to hopefully reduce cell expansion damage. 

It seemingly failed!

I should add one other factor. The last three seedlings may have died from KSD which Reighard and Payne believed could be exasperated by temperatures below 10F.  KSD could have been invloved more years and I wasn't experienced in the condition (or disease) sufficiently to recognize it.   

Jerry  


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