How you can save your plants damaged by cold weather

PHOENIX (AZFamily) — The Valley has seen a stretch of cold First Alert Weather mornings due to Freeze Warnings, which can lead to trouble for your plants.

Fortunately, if you didn’t take steps ahead of the cold weather, there are still things you can do to help revive your plants. Dave the Garden Guy joined Good Morning Arizona to talk about what to do next.

He said it’s important not to prune your plants before cold weather hits.

“The other thing you want to do is you want to go and turn your water on,” he said. “It’s been fairly dry. A lot of people have actually cut that water back, but it’s best to probably turn that water on at night. Have it going for 5 to 10 minutes, and that little bit of water is going to help that plant material stay real warm.”

Dave said some plants that could be most damaged are lantana and hibiscus.

“One of the things you’re going to see a lot of frost damage is this ficus tree, of course, and these guys are the ones that need to be covered,” Dave said.

With more cold weather and overnight lows in the 30s expected next week, he said it’s best to leave the covers on these types of plants.

Dave said if your plants have frost damage, spray a type of liquid, organic fertilizer on them. He said synthetic fertilizers could harm the plants with more freezes expected soon.

“Heavy fertilization, especially with synthetics, about February to March is when we want to fertilize,” he said. “Right around Valentine’s Day is typically when we want to fertilize.”

He said to also leave on a frost cloth, which is slightly translucent and allows sunlight to get to the plant.

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