Almost all citrus are grafted, so if the plant is killed back to ground level, you are unlikely to get good fruit from it when it recovers.

Ryan

I always let my non gardening friends know not to touch anything until after April, when we get the second hard frost of winter...

In 1990 my two lemon trees died to the ground. I have more lemons than I can use off both of them. So sometimes they do come back. I now use Cloud Cover 2 times every winter to protect them.

Penny

Yep, I agree. There's some sad looking plants out there and they still have at least one more night of freezing to go.
Some of mine that were holding up during the first 2 nights just could't take the 3rd night of cold temps and drooped, blackened, or dropped all their leaves. All the stems under the foliage look fine...green and firm. A little sun and some warm temps and they'll leaf out again.

wanda

A few years back I thought I lost my first brugmansia for good only to see it come back better and bigger... 12ft from the 6ft it was before the frost. The roots survived and I had new growth from the gound up. I'm not taking any changes this frost and covered as much as I could. I'll wait to see if I get any new growth on the exposed area's this spring (or sooner) before I do any pruning.

Currently, I don't have one leaf left on the poor thing or any of the other seven I now have. I hope they all make it!

Liisa

I bought and planted a lot of small sized tropicals last fall. The theory was to get them in the ground and rooted for a big growth spurt in spring. Now I am just hoping they rooted enough to survive until spring.

What about fertilization? Is that good or bad for a plant that looks dead? I think some of my freeze-affected plants are due for some fertilization, but I'm wondering if it could somehow stress them while they're trying to recover.

This question sounds really silly now that I've typed it, but I honestly don't know! Thanks for any help.

~Sara

I have a question, too.

I thought I had gotten away scott-free, but when I was out in the yard this afternoon, I saw that my ficus nitidas had gone completely brown from top to bottom. (They were planted three years ago, and had grown from 12 to about 20 feet high.)

Are they dead?

Sara and Boondoggle, in looking around for myself I found an old artile that mentions both of your questions. Your plant Sara and question of fertilizing after the freeze is over. I'm always interested in all the info I can find on plants and this pertains to all of mine also. Hope you find it helpful too. Sorry about the spam on the site, I ignored it myself don't click on it.

Here is a link that might be useful: article about plants after the freeze

Don't fertilize until all danger of frost is past. The arctic blast may be on the wane, but it's still winter. IF it warms up enough so that the plants will take up the nutrients, the will put out tender new growth with no time harden off, which will make them much more susceptible to freezing.
I won't be fertilizing until the beginning of March in my zone.

wanda

I can remember 20 or 30 years ago when a freeze "killed" acres of eucalyptus trees in the Oakland hills. By the time the county involved went through the process of hiring a contractor to remove them, they had recovered. Al

Thanks lesdvs9, that's just the info I needed.

It's funny, I have that particular Sunset, as well as a huge stack of old issues, but because I don't have any kind of index, I would've never known about it if you hadn't written your post.

Thanks again for the heads up.