Dramatic Winter Damage

On December 22-23, Tennessee experienced a dramatic flash freeze when temps dropped from the low 50’s to below 0 in a matter of about 8-12 hours. This type of drastic drop in temperatures is referred to as a flash freeze. Plants took significant damage during this freeze. The video here offers some great insight on the cause of the damage and what people can do now and later to save your plants, gardens, and landscape.

Save Your Plants

Excerpt from the Video

“Once in a while Mother Nature feels the need to flex her muscles.  Remind us who is in charge.  That’s exactly what happened just a few days before Christmas twenty twenty-two.  Here in Tennessee and across the Eastern half of the United States, we dropped from the low to mid fifties to below zero in just a period of eight to twelve hours depending on your location.  And when that happens, a flash freeze, all kinds of damage happens to our plants.  So let’s take a look at a variety of plants and we will talk about what to do now, what to do later.  To help your gardens thrive and hopefully get some of these plants to come back from the brink.

The first category we want to talk about are broad leaf ever greens.  These come in both perennial forms like this hellabor.  And then a very common landscape shrub.  Auto luken, skip laurel, the whole laurel family, this would also include magnolias, hollies, nandinas, and some other perennials.”