Don’t rush to conclusions as you look at your garden after this record cold weather

After this week’s cold spell for the ages, most of us are trying to figure out next best steps.

We know damage has been done, but we’re not sure how much. We don’t know how to assess it and how to move to the next square in the game.

Unfortunately, I’ve been around this block a few times before and I’ve learned some lessons the hard way. I don’t guarantee to have all the answers, but perhaps some of the things I’ve learned in the past will be of help.

Don’t rush to conclusions. Just because a plant looks injured or dead after the cold, don’t assume that all is lost. Some plants replace browned leaves with new foliage within just a few weeks. Live oaks come to mind, since this is their natural time to transition to the new growing season’s foliage.

Other plants get hurt worse and freeze completely to the ground. We’re used to seeing that with bananas each winter. Hopefully they’ll come back this spring. Only time will tell. But we’re probably going to lose many of our fig, oleander and pampasgrass plants back to the ground. They generally regrow from their roots, so if you find that they don’t leaf out properly come spring, trim off the dead top growth and stand out of their way. Hopefully they’ll be back in a hurry.

Other shrubs are going to be hurt even worse. I can almost guarantee you that pittosporums, gardenias, star jasmines, sago palms, loquats, fig ivies and fatsias will be lost. Hopefully you didn’t plant too many. You always want to limit your risks by using only a handful of those plants that we’ve known were marginally winter-hardy in our area.

I worry about several plants that often are hurt locally. Texas sage will defoliate in even moderate winters. Those two “great winters” back in the 80s killed them and Japanese yews (Podocarpus) and Texas mountain laurels as well. Hopefully that won’t be the case this time around, but again, we won’t know for a few days or weeks.

People often ask me about Mexican white oak (also known as Monterey oak, Quercus polymorpha) and how well it will do in our area. I had one that I planted in 1976 on the recommendation of a good friend in the nursery industry. It grew really well, but sadly that extended cold spell of ’83-’84 killed it entirely (roots and all), and ever since I’ve been unwilling to recommend it for North Texas landscapes. It’s rated for USDA Hardiness Zone 7, but that was just a bit too optimistic for it that year.

But the biggest loss I personally faced from either of those winters in the 1980s was the loss of my entire lawn of Raleigh St. Augustine the night of December 23, 1989. It had been planted and thriving for 10 years or longer, and the idea that it might have been killed by one night’s exposure to those radically low temperatures was just a foreign concept to my mind. I hope that doesn’t happen again this time around. By the time I knew my lawn was a goner all the sod in Texas had already been bought, dug and planted. I went without turf for most of that year.

If you have a perennial garden, those plants will be just fine. Early bloomers like daffodils and narcissus that were already coming into bud and bloom may not produce well this spring, but as a whole, perennials are some of the toughest plants that we grow. They may be a week or two behind schedule this spring, but they will be fine.

Unless they were fully budded or blooming, peaches, plums and pears should be fine. That assumes, of course, that we don’t get any late-season frosts or freezes. This is Texas, and those kinds of weather abnormalities never would happen. Or, would they?

On the other hand, some of your early-season vegetable crops are probably behind schedule. In fact, it may be too late to save them. Onions and snap peas planted this late will probably run into hot weather before they can reach full maturity. Odds are that onion plants you’d already set out could have been lost. There’s little reason to replant this late. You might as well pick up with the planting of cabbage, broccoli and Irish potatoes, with leafy and root crops soon to follow late this month.

Not that you’d have much control over their situation anyway, but don’t spend much time worrying about wildflowers. They’ve survived strange Texas winters many times over their evolutionary history and they’ve always come out smiling on the other side. They will in this case as well. Look for bluebonnets to start blooming sometime in five or six weeks.

That is a brief overview of where we are at this point. Nurseries are busy unpacking their plants and getting ready for a busy spring season. Nursery stock was already in short supply because of all the relandscaping folks did while stuck at home during the pandemic. That goes double now. Wise gardeners will start shopping early.

You can hear Neil Sperry on KLIF 570AM on Saturday afternoons 1-3 pm and on WBAP 820AM Sunday mornings 8-10 am. Join him at www.neilsperry.com and follow him on Facebook.

This story was originally published February 19, 2021 at 5:30 AM.