Extension office shares tips for plant damages from winter weather
After residents living across the state recently experienced record-breaking temperatures and winter weather, Dr. James Robbins, extension horticultural specialist with the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture shared information about winter damage of ornamental plants.
According to Robbins, there is a standard that gardeners and growers use to determine which plants are likely to survive in a given area. Using this same standard, individuals can determine which plants may have been damaged during the recent
historic weather.
“As gardeners, we try to expand our plant palette into plants that are marginally cold hardy. In most years that is not a concern, but this weather event clearly will separate our marginally from fully cold hard plants,” he said.
In central Arkansas, residents are likely to see freeze damage on Loropetalum, gardenia, evergreen azaleas, crapemyrtles, Japanese Ternatroemia, Japanese Aucuba, Japanese star jasmine, yew plum pine and more, he said.
Residents may even notice that only some areas of an individual plants were damaged, such as stems that were fully exposed.
In one example, the above ground shoots on a broadleaf evergreen Loropetalum was killed to the group just three days after the below zero temperatures, but it likely that the root system is still alive. If so, the plant can regrow from the ground up, but the full extent of the damage won’t be known for several weeks, Robbins said.
“The silver lining in this historic event is that most plants were still in near full dormancy. If this had happened in another few weeks the extent of the damage would be much worse,” Robbins said.
Residents may be able to see signs of damage in the form of “burned” foliage on evergreen plants.
“The problem is the full extent of the damage may be ‘hidden’ and we won’t know for another two months the full extent to what has happened,” Robbins said.
With small plants, individuals can scratch twigs to check for greenness, but this test will not work with a tree like a live oak, Robbins added.
With this test, it is also important to know that damage may still be in progress. “Once plants start flushing out in several weeks, we will get a clearer picture on the extent of the damage although even that may not be the final story since buds may open but then the ‘plumbing’ is damaged, so the plant can’t support that growth,” Robbins said. “People just need to be patient at this time and wait about two months before we have a clearer picture.”
One piece of good news is that snow is an insulator.
“For ground cover plants that are tender, the deep snow layer provided sufficient cold protection, but that no bearing on most shrubs or trees,” he said.
All in all, Robbins encourages gardeners to be patient.
“Don’t rush to address this problem now but re-evaluate your plants in about two months. At that time we will have a clearer picture on extent of the damage and then we can decide where to prune or whether some plants may need to be replaced,” he said.