symplastless wrote:
"Then the deep freeze killed all the buds, one was
dead."

How do buds freeze? I thought they super-cooled.

I don't know. Maybe it was a poor choice of words. When I bought the
trees late one evening and planted them the very next day, the buds were
swollen and green but not leafed out except but a few. I planted,
watered and mulched well, and all the buds turned brown one the one
tree, and it looked dead but for two green buds. The other one suffered
quite a bit of similar damage but not as bad, still leafed out quite a
bit after planting and through that cold spell. I tried to put garbage
bags over the trees and take them off in the morning when the temps rose
enough again so that late bad frost that dipped into the teens wouldn't
kill my newly-planted trees even though I knew established trees could
have handled it.

I wanted two to match, like not one NS and one Montmorency. By that
time all HD had left was Montmorency, and I felt darn lucky to have
found the NS ones at a good price. They were $25 apiece. I was lucky
HD honored the warranty because technically the one tree wasn't that
bad, but they didn't give me a hassle about it when I returned them both.

It was a struggle for me to plant them in the first place, I didn't
think I could do that kind of hard work any more, had to dig through and
remove sod which I used to patch a couple bad spots in the lawn, and
make two really deep, wide holes, pile up all the dirt on plastic. Then
to have to dig them up again in order to take them back and plant new
ones didn't make me too happy, but I was so determined I wanted cherry
trees again, so I did it. I was exhausted frankly, but hard work has
given me back a little more stamina, not as much as I'd like :-(

Over 30 years ago when I planted my first NS, I went through a regular
nursery, and they wanted $50 for two. It is possible my memory is bad
and they wanted $40. Anyway, I got them to give me a break on the
price, and they subtracted $10, and those trees were marvelous for
years. Needless to say, I was very sad to lose them and cut them down,
had help with that because I wasn't feeling well at the time.



Ref:
Milon F. George; Michael J. Burke Cold Hardiness and Deep Supercooling in
Xylem of Shagbark Hickory Plant Physiol. (1977) 59, 319-325

Something I do not understand is how Xylem super-cools. The xylem is what
the cambium zone produces to the inside. However, by the time fall and
winter comes, the xylem has differentiated and becomes sapwood not xylem.
Kind of confusing.