By grafting low, at most a few inches from the rootstock, I can get some good freeze insurance with a nursery can, some duct tape, and some dirt. I'm using the heat from the ground to keep the rootstock and graft from freezing. If we get a Christmas 1989 type of freeze here with 10F and freezing for 96 hours, I lose the top and the next year of fruit, but the tree will be grown back just as big and fruit in the 2nd year after the freeze. I wish I had banked my trees in 1989! They froze to the ground and even the rootstock never sprouted again. If I'd have done that, the guy who owns my old house would have 17 year old mature satsuma and kumquat trees and more fruit than he could eat. We haven't had a citrus killer freeze since then. Thanks to Bonnie Childers for showing me how to do it. I was so discouraged by the 1983 and 1989 freezes, I didn]'t plant citrus trees again until 2000.

Mr. Texas, I just wanted to say that I enjoy your posts. Often you come in from a different angle. Keeps my thinking well rounded.
Terry

The 1989 Christmas storm left an impression on many of us that we'll never forget.

The official high in Gainesville that morning was 16 degrees at the airport, but my porch thermometer said eleven. I didn't have any citrus then which was a good thing as the two to three inches of ice would have probably wrecked it the way the power loss and subfreezing weather wrecked my plumbing.

Haven't had another freeze like that since and don't want one!

.....Alan.

All my grafts are high, some as high as 20 ft. Of course I'm in California Zone 9b and since the last ice age we have gone to a record low of 12 deg F.