HOW TO TAKE CARE OF PLANTS HURT BY HAILSTORMS
As residents and officials continue poring over the damage from Tuesday’s latest round of storms — including hail larger than an inch in diameter — it’s important to remember that Colorado’s latespring/early-summer weather is not your enemy.
A fickle guest, sure, but not necessarily your enemy.
“Most perennial crops — trees, shrubs, bushes, things like that — have the capacity to releaf, so just be patient and they should come back,” said Curtis Utley, who trains master gardeners in plant pathology for Colorado State University.
Indeed, most snow-damaged trees should already be showing signs of recovering, provided they’ve been properly pruned and protected since the late-winter and spring storms.
But what about the tender vegetable plants and flowers that made their outdoor debuts in recent days?
Consecutive, months-longs bouts of weekend rain and cold temperatures have conspired to make the last couple weekends of relatively dry weather busy ones for landscapers and gardeners. And that includes moving vulnerable plants out into Colorado’s typically unpredictable weather.
“Last year we had the exact same weather patterns,” said Utley, a CSU horticulture extension agent in Jefferson County. “It was wet and cold in a lot of the spring, and it got hot and dry later in the summer, so we didn’t have that many more hail events along the Front Range.”
It’s OK to start digging in
with flowers and vegetables since we’ve already passed the average lastfrost date of May 15, although some will wait until the psychologically important date of June 1, just to be safe.
“I suppose it would be more financially smart to plant a portion of your annual plants early and save a portion of your budget for later in the season,” Utley said. “It’s up to the individual, but if you do that and we get a freak hailstorm later in the season, you’re not overspending all at once.”
Fast-moving hailstorms offer another unwelcome visitor in the form of fungus, which can set into the flesh wounds of everything from woody trees to petunias. After a thorough post-storm inspection and pruning or trimming of any dead material, spray the cuts with copper soap, which is available at many garden centers.
“Openings into the bark of woody plants allows for cytospora canker, and there are not many protective chemistries out there for every crop. But in stone fruit, there are fungicides that can be applied to wounds to prevent infection,” Utley said. “So it’s something people could proactively do within 72 hours of a storm. But read all the label instructions before making any application.”
More tips: Wait to fertilize until new growth appears, and look for easy ways to protect areas you’re concerned about — including using trees or larger plants as cover for smaller ones, or planting along walls and fences.
Finally, plant with Colorado’s weather in mind. That means selecting narrow-leafed plants that can withstand our pelting storms, or native perennials that are well-adapted to our climate and geography (see Lauren Springer’s book “The Undaunted Garden: Planting for Weather-Resistant Beauty”). Keep soil healthy and balanced, with neither too much nor too little watering.
And while they are rare, there are those seemingly miraculous plants that seem to brush it all off.
“It may be a little early for it right now, but one fun oddity is crabapple trees,” Utley said. “If you’ve got one that was just done blooming and it was completely damaged by hail, oftentimes you see some of the flower buds that are set next spring opening up in the summertime.”