The early February freeze took out much of my garden along with all of my soft-leaved gingers and heliconias. I now have a huge mess of dried up brown and white leaves all over the place. I'm not sure what the best method for recovery is. Do I simply cut everything down to the ground or do I just remove the dead leaves and hope that the stalks will grow new again? With some of these plants I'm pretty sure that nothing will happen from the old stems but with others I'm not so sure. I have a very large area with a huge 12 ft shell gingers which look a mess but there is still lots of green inside. I think I should just level the whole thing and start over again. What do you think?
Same with my various heleconias. These are very large bushes which have been growing for three years without being cut down. New growth is already staing at ground level. Maybe a total cut of the old growth would be beneficial?
Fred
What is best after a freeze?
Fred I can't give you any advice on the heleconias, they won't survive in my zone. At least you are seeing new growth already. From what I understand about the alpinias, they bloom on old growth, if your foliage has been frozen back, this years flowers are goners. Your rhizomes should be fine so cut the brown mess away. I could grow the alpinias here but my zone 8a freezes never would let them bloom. I sent them south.
If you have hedychiums just cut away the foliage to the ground, you'll have new sprouts soon.
Kabby
If you still have green stalks but just have burnt leaves, you can trim off the leaves and leave the stalks to help provide a bit of energy while new shoots start popping up, then cut them off later once your stand gets a bit "up" again.
You and I are in the same boat. I haven;t cleaned anything up yet and won;t until the last week of March, 'just in case'.
Then it will be a big cleanup.
I have bananas, gingers, crinums and tons of other stuff that got burned badly, everything is pushing out new leaves and new shoots now that its warmed up.
Do heliconias ever go dormant? I was told that they never do. One of mine have all dead leaves but I pulled it out of the pot and the roots all look firm and white. Does that mean it will come back? It has been protected on really cold nights. I think it is a common psittacorum 'Andromeda'.
My nanners got burt bad too here but most look green at the base and some even put out gobs of pups lol. I guess they thought they were gonna die and better hurry up and reproduce... I hope there are no more major freezes in March!
I have already cut everything back and new growth is already appearing on various gingers. It's only such a shame that my huge plants had to be removed but maybe it's good for the plants to start fresh ever once in a while.
Fred
no they don't go dormant. They just lose all the topgrowth, and therefore, all of that year's potential blooms, as the great majority of heliconia bloom only off of 2+ year old canes