Everytime I step outside I smell it. A pungent odor that permeates the air. It's the smell of my freeze-burned plants as they continue their slow demise. It's weird, but the damage was worse 3 to 5 days after the freeze. Black wilted leaves continue to hang from several large tropical plants and the crotons continue to shrivel up. But the odor of death hangs heavy in the air as I patiently wait, clippers in hand!Thursday, January 10, 2008
What's That Smell?
Everytime I step outside I smell it. A pungent odor that permeates the air. It's the smell of my freeze-burned plants as they continue their slow demise. It's weird, but the damage was worse 3 to 5 days after the freeze. Black wilted leaves continue to hang from several large tropical plants and the crotons continue to shrivel up. But the odor of death hangs heavy in the air as I patiently wait, clippers in hand!
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5 comments:
I like your attitude. Sometimes we need that extra nudge to do the needed pruning. We were blessed with hardly any freeze damage..just a few plants, while all around us, I see lots of totally pruned plants. I know what you mean about the smell - hard to pinpoint, but it smells like New England in the fall - dying leaves... I covered my dining room table and most of the kitchen floor with whatever was potted and movable. Picked 7 little tomatoes this morning... back into the yard!
Linda...Glad to see you're back blogging. Your little tomatoes look yummy!
I know that smell. I can imagine that it is intensified if it warmed up right away.
Since you are in Centeral FL do you have a hard freeze like this every year or is this an infrequent phenom?
Susan: I have experienced the same thing. The first morning after the freeze everything looked better than a few days later. Now there is more damage than I had tallied. Still nothing lost all together.
I know I shouldn't have but I've already started clipping... it's a gamble I know but likely we won't have two freezes in one year. :-)
Lisa...these were the lowest temps we've had in 5 years. Most winters we just slip by with temps usually hovering at daybreak around 32 degrees for one night. That is usually enough to do some slight damage to the real tropical plants. A little trimming and we're good to go. This year I'll be trimming many things back to the ground, but everything should return.
Meems...I too have started to trim back. I'm trying to restrain myself but it's painful to look at the frozen plants. Fortunately, we are getting lots of rain :-)
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