SICK BURN RESILIENCY
It may be New Orleans’ literal least favorite word and putting it in the title may have lost me half my readers before we even got through this sentence. Unfortunately, it is a word that continues to accurately define so much of our landscape, our infrastructure, our culture, ourselves, and unsurprisingly given the context of this column, our plants.
“Resilient” is objectively a good and positive and kind and powerful thing to be called, but like all language, technology, religion, and (reaching, but yes absolutely) plant life, put in the wrong hands it can easily be subverted into a tool of control and exploitation. Kind of like how 10 inches of snow in a subtropical climate can somehow be used to argue that climate change (née global warming) is a lie.
Speaking of and slowly meandering towards the focal point of this piece—being the snow and our plants surviving it—did they not do better than they have during most of the freezes that we aren’t historically particularly prepared for but which we have been bombarded with over the last 20 years or so? Were they not so resilient despite days of freeze and quite literally unprecedented snow? Of course they were. Because they are New Orleanian and so mightily resilient. But also, science. The short version of this ecological science lesson is: While many plants have not evolved to survive in cold climates over time and would die in more northerly climes, those plants that do well where it snows often actually thrive because it snows often. Snow is insulating, it acts just as leaves dropped on the ground by a tree do. It acts as mulch. It regulates temperatures for the ground below, where roots are, where the most resilient and everlasting bits of nearly every plant live. More temperate plants have evolved around this truth and would not exist somewhere cold where there is no humidity or snow. This is why tundras are tundras. When you think tundra (if you have ever thought tundra), you probably first think: no trees. If you look up tundra’s definition, it is: dry, frozen subsoil, flat. Similarly but differently, it remains my (fairly) objective advice that when a freeze comes to us, it is usually more important to generously water your plants than to insulate them, because the water first helps plants circulate energy and heat themselves but also acts as an insulator even as it begins to freeze (up to a point).
So, the snow has saved our plants more than their resiliency has, and yet, they suffer. They look broken and sad, and they may actually be. But odds are fantastic that very few of them are actually dead. And fortunately for you, the things you can do to make them thrive again are the exact same things you can do to get rid of their dark, gloomy dead bits.
If you have the time, energy, or money, the sooner you can slice the heck out of any part of your plants that look rough post-freeze, the better. Much of their damage will be cosmetic, and what you’re looking at won’t necessarily be dead branches or dying leaves, but that which looks less than vibrant is at least damaged and those particular bits will never look beautiful again. And when you cut them off, your plants will stop expending valuable energy trying to keep these miserable bits alive and managing survival, and start them on the resilient bounceback process of growing new leaves and branches at an exponentially more energetic rate. Even better, this being early spring, your plants are now primed for new growth on a whole new level anyhow, and everything you want to happen will, and faster than you ever imagined (especially if it’s bananas we’re chopping up here).
Freezes aside, so much of perennial plant maintenance is cutting off things that feel bad to cut off, as if we’re hurting the plant. And oftentimes we are. When we do snip off plant bits it usually has less to do with the plants’ actual health and more to do with what we want the plant to do and how we want it to look. Yes, just as plants have adapted to depending on snow for insulation during the cold, many of them have adapted to critters nibbling on them as a means to naturally prune their older bits, and as such, when we cut them to shreds for the sake of our aesthetic whimsies, we are to a degree imitating their adaptive nature and facilitating their natural growth process. That said, we tend to do it too much—way, way, way too much, and are in fact hurting them more than we are helping them often when we prune. After a freeze, however, you can butcher your beloved babies to your heart’s content and feel morally angelic throughout the entire process, as you are absolutely giving your plants a helpful hacking through and through.
It is important to pull out a critical eye when you prepare to set your plants up for their renewed lives. Especially with more traditional tree-type plants, there will often be immediate but subtle new growth near the base of your plant. Look closely and carefully for spaces where there is new greenery emerging from a plant’s stump, because oftentimes the new fresh bits are trying to emerge from old plant bases that do not look so much alive. Find the green and chop just above it. It is this simple. Also, chopping below this is just about the only way you can go “too far” when cutting back your plants, I promise (unless it is citrus, in which case you want to make sure not to cut off the part of your fruit tree you actually like; this is a rant for another day, look up grafting citrus for more). There is almost no such thing as too much. And I cannot emphasize enough that the more you take from them, the faster and more lushly they will bounce back. Also, a healthy bit of fertilizer definitely won’t hurt anything. Sometimes you have to touch rock bottom in order to bounce back, and a little hand up and a little hand out certainly won’t hurt a thing about it either. Is this not resiliency?
If you’ve got questions for the Dirt Nerd, feel free to email ian@hotplantsnursery.com or visit @hotplantsnursery.
illustrations by Rachel Speck
