Local garden nurseries are still assessing damage from the freeze of December 2022.
A lot of San Antonians saw plants wither or die during the extended chill. So did garden nurseries, like Rainbow Gardens on Bandera Road, on the Northwest Side.
Owner Brandon Kirby said some plants at the nursery were killed off after blustery winds penetrated covers set up to protect them. But he said there was a bigger problem than that.
“We had more trouble with pipes freezing. We turn off our irrigation system religiously when it gets cold, but that wind chill was so brutal it ended up freezing some of our pipes before we had time to turn it off,” he said.
Kirby said don’t be quick to trim dead looking plants because such a move could trigger new growth that would only be killed off by another freeze. Just let them recover and regrow on their own once the weather warms.
He said they have been busy answering phone calls from customers about frozen plants since last week. Many locals lost tropical sorts of plants, but he said that is no reason not to consider adding them to your landscape or patio again this spring.
“For the average person, I think education is key to understand what kind of plant they have and what they do can to protect it. You know, many of these tropical plants you can bring inside for that one night that’s cold and put it back out on the porch and it’s just fine.”
He said for those who can’t wait until spring to find out if a bush or plant is still alive, they can do a scratch test on a few branches as they work their way down to the base of the plant. Seeing green is a good sign, while seeing brown not so much.
“If you’re scraping underneath the bark and it’s brown and kind of crispy and dead, that piece of the plant is dead,” he said. “So, you can kind of work your way down to the base and sometimes you’ll find … the top half of the plant’s dead and the bottom half is fine. Sometimes it will be dead all the way to the ground and then sometimes they’ll come back from the root.”
Kirby said protect plants from the next freeze this winter by insulating their roots by watering them and covering their base with mulch before temperatures drop to 32 or lower. He said if you have any doubt about a plant’s prospects of surviving, just cover it up.
“You can use a high quality frost cloth that are sold at the local nurseries,” he said. “It’s important to get a high quality frost cloth. They usually add about six degrees of temperature. Some of the less tightly woven frost clothes allow the air to come through and don’t protect from frost as well the nice tightly woven frost cloths do.”
Kirby said only keep frost covers on plants when temperatures are freezing, so they can get some sun.