In central Texas, all our oaks are starting to bud. I'm worried about all our mountain laurels. They all look awful.

6 degrees was the lowest on our fayette county property according to my instrument. 14 in brazoria county.

think it might have more to do with soil type? i dunno, that makes more sense to me than just a few degrees difference in temperature.

Could be the soil, but our temps were usda hardiness zone 6 and yours were zones 7 & 8. That's considered a significant difference for a live oak.

Pretty sure all my mountain laurels died. Live oaks look great.

agent-maroon said:

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Could be the soil, but our temps were usda hardiness zone 6 and yours were zones 7 & 8. That's considered a significant difference for a live oak.

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well I'll be goddammed. didnt realize they were that sensitive to temps.

FWIW, We have some grapefruit and orange trees in brazoria county that have survived this mess (with no preparation). Im still not sure what to make of all this.

I'd wait. My mountain laurels bounced back. Don't look great but they're alive.

Cant be too sure. Probably should just burn them down.

Was closing some tabs that I haven't opened in a while when I ran across one about freeze damage & live oaks. One part of the article caught my attention in particular:

Quote:

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Smaller & newly planted trees will have the longest road to recovery, especially if they were not well-watered before the deep freeze. Pay particular attention to the trunks, "One other thing to look for, especially in young live oaks, is loose bark along their trunks from the extreme freeze," said Arborist Scott Dahlberg. This occurs because the bark separates from the cambial tissue.

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https://preservationtree.com/tree-school/identification-guide/oak-wilt

Went outside to get the mail and walked up to our 50+ year old live oak. The bark is separating from the trunk on opposite sides. The bark separation is like 2' at the split. I can tap on the bark and it's hollow behind it for like 1/2 the circumference of the trunk.

We're going to lose this tree, aren't we? Any arborists post on OB?

I have three live oaks on my lot that were planted in '87. It took me three days to clean all the leaves up. Around 6" deep in some places in my yard.

Have live oaks on either side of my gate, the scraggly one, lost leaves quickly and is putting on new.....75 yards away, the nice and thick sturdy one has brown leaves, see no green under bark, and it appears the bark is cracking....just like cattle, always the best looking one that dies.

My Live Oaks are all putting on new leaves, but my Loblolly pine still looks like hell. Gonna make me sad if I lose that thing.

My live oaks are finally blooming out but all my brown pine trees are still brown. I don't think the pine will come back

I have 3 or 4 live oaks and 1 is really struggling. 1/2 of it seems to be budding out but the other half is still really brown. Mountain Laurels may be gone. Lost a bunch of wax leaf bushes near house and shed.

I fought leaves with a rake all last weekend as my love oaks lost all of them too. Was at least 3 complete Aggie baseball games on radio worth of leaf hauling.

Got down to -8F where I live and my live oak lost all its leaves, but this week it started budding out again.

As far as I can tell, all of my live oaks are making a recovery. Now we just need rain!!!

I mow yards in the afternoons after work. Have done this for a long time. Abilene. -4 on Tuesday morning, the 16th, here. I had all of my yards in good shape with leaves from typical trees, Oak, Pecan, Mesquite, Mulberry, Elm prior to the Deep Freeze. Have several yards with huge live oaks. All lost their leaves during/after February Deep Freeze. Been getting caught up cleaning up these leaves during March. A bumper crop of leaves. Noticed this week that most Live Oaks are starting to bud out along with other Oaks, Pecans and even noticed a few Mesquite.