No, not your spouse, but with the freeze damage done to your landscape or garden. The recent freeze experienced in this area may have caused your precious plants to become ugly.
According to AgriLife Today, pruning dead plant material can cause more harm through winter. Michael Arnold, Ph.D., director of The Gardens at Texas A&M and professor of landscape horticulture in College Station knows a thing or two about plants.
Arnold said “Warmer daytime temperatures may give gardeners the itch to get outside, prune back damaged leaves, and clean up plant material following a hard freeze, but they should resist.”
Plants may be damaged at the freezing mark, but a hard freeze for four hours or more can damage cold-hardy plants and kill those less cold-tolerant.
Arnold suggests that homeowners and gardeners consider their local average final frost date before trimming up when a hard freeze hits in November or February.
In some areas, a deep freeze can occur during early March or even April. Watch your forcasts.
“There is a tendency to want to spruce things up, but if we do that too quickly, we can predispose the plants to even more freeze damage,” said Arnold.
He advises us to be patient and learn to live with the ugly.
The dead foliage acts as Mother Nature’s insulation.
