TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Highlands Today

Did Hard Freeze Kill Your Plants?

Jasmina Meyer/Highlands Today

From left: Grounds Keeper Eileen Beck and Master Gardner Dee Dee Jacobson with the Highlands County Extension Service speak about a Plumeria Evergreen on their property, earlier explaining the care procedure for frost stricken plants.

ADVERTISEMENT

By JOE SEELIG

Highlands Today

Published: January 30, 2009

SEBRING - It's very likely that Jack Frost nipped at your beautiful garden during the last freeze. Actually, many gardens look more like he took a blow torch to it.

Master Gardener Coordinator Dee Dee Jacobson, University of Florida urban horticulturalist at the Highlands County Extension office, said Thursday that people should hold off any urges to trim, prune or fertilizing until some time in early March.

"Nobody should be trimming anything back right now because there is still a danger of frost," said Jacobson. "The brown leaves act as a buffer, until you know we're done with our frost."

Based upon the past record, frost can still happen all through February and into early March, she said.

After then, it's OK to trim plants back from the dead leaves to the next node.

"When pruning back the dead plant material, trim it back to a node and if it's green in the phloem stop there," she said, there's still life. "If not keep trimming until you find green."

"In vascular plants, phloem is the living tissue that carries organic nutrients, particularly sucrose, a sugar, to all parts of the plant where needed," according to Wikipedia.org.

Cutting it back too soon allows the frost to get even deeper into the plants. But not trimming the plants at all, and leaving dead sticks on the ends of the branches, may promote disease within the plants.

The National Weather Service's seven-day forecast predicts temperatures could hit in the low 30s on Friday, Saturday and Tuesday nights. That means there is a good possibility for another frost if there is no wind, Jacobson agreed.

Eileen Beck is the Highlands County groundskeeper supervisor. She walked the outside of the extension office with Jacobson on Thursday, showing some of the damage sustained there due to frost and ways she managed to save some of her annuals.

Her workers pulled the dead leaves off of a copper plant, but didn't recommend that for other plants, for example, one of her croton plants.

"That got hurt by the freeze real bad," said Beck. "We won't know until afterward in February or mid-March if it made it."

Pointing at a brown Tiba china tree, Beck said her workers would be doing a lot of pruning to the tree.

She managed to save some of her annuals such as marigolds and salvia.

"I pulled up the mulch around the marigolds," Beck said, running her fingers across the tops of the orange flowers. "The salvia, we put flower pots over them."

"If she didn't do that it would have melted, looked like wilted lettuce," Jacobson said.

"This melted," said Jacobson, handling the leaf of a philodendron Xanadu plant. "When I pulled on the leaf it popped right off in my hand because it's already starting to rot - turning to mush."

What about the palm trees?

"Palms aren't really trees," she said. "They're in the grass family - grass, lilies, palms are monocots."

Speaking of grass, it's not time to fertilize your yard either, said Beck.

"Do not fertilize it and do not over-water it," said Beck. "If the yard doesn't need to be mowed, don't cut it. If you cut it, that could damage the lawn even more. If you get another frost it could cause it to be damaged to the root."

"Do not turn your water on your lawn when you're having a freeze," said Jacobson.

What if you've already cut back your bushes?

"Pray we don't have a bad enough freeze," she said. "If you're having an urge to get out and trim, don't do it; be lazy; look the other way."

Another don't is wrapping your trees.

Tent them, said Beck. It's best if the material isn't touching the leaves.

"Anyone can use tarps and build something over the top," she said, pointing to some plants they put under tarps at the extension office. "It really helps."

Jacobson was very sad when she looked at her evergreen plumeria, a cultivated variety, which once was adorned with white flowers, but now suffered with rotting stems and browned leaves.

"It's not so evergreen right now," she said. "I'll trim it back to the node and pray, and talk to it nice and apologize."

Debbie Armstrong is a sales representative at Robbins Nursery, located at 4803 U.S. 27 S., in Sebring.

She said Robbins will hold a seminar at 9 a.m. Monday, on what to do after a freeze.

"People are coming in replacing stuff that froze with green things, evergreen shrubs, which they don't have to worry about."

Rather than cutting plants right now, they are suggesting a liquid feeding of Miracle Grow or something like that used in moderation could help strengthen the plants.

"Keep watering," she said. "Just because it's brown doesn't mean it's dead."

Lovett Lyman, from Ontario, but wintering in Sebring, was at Robbins Nursery.

"I had to tear out my banana trees," he said. "They were mostly dead."

He's replacing them with two Spanish bayonet (green with spikes at the ends) and two beautiful red Hawaiian Thai-Black Magic plants.

"I've got to get some color," he said.

Barbara Reed, of Sebring, said her tomatoes and pepper plants died. She was hoping upon hope that her mango tree will recover, she said.

"This has never happened before," she said. "And I've been living there since 1995. The bananas out back were brown too. They'll come back."

She was also checking out some herbs for her garden.

"I love to cook with fresh herbs," she said, with an accent stemming from her roots in Massachusetts. "I'll keep these plants inside until after the weekend."

Robbins owner Bobby Heffner said the freeze took out 15 percent to 20 percent of his entire inventory. He didn't venture a monetary guess.

He said they will empty most every potted plant from the yard and get it inside for the weekend.

"Then we'll put it all back again," he said.

"Our coconut palms got hammered," he said pointing at one. "They handled this one but if it gets down in the teens it'll kill that. The only way is to cover it, but there's no way to cover those big trees."

Highlands Today reporter Joe Seelig can be reached at (863) 386-5834 or jseelig@highlandstoday.com .

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT