WINTER DAMAGE

I think one of the worst things about winter damage is you often don't learn about it until spring. It can surprise you.

The affected plants will often try to leaf out or even flower in the spring.  But, with the warming of the weather, they wilt and die.  Sometimes just a little of the plant will try to leaf out.

With woody shrubs, like roses, the clue is the color. Rose canes die from the end back toward the base. The canes will be a black or dark color. (The color black isn't associated with death by accident.) The black part needs to be removed.

As you cut off the canes, notice the color of the inside. Keep cutting until the color goes from a tea with cream color to a near white color.

If the rose is a hybrid tea or a grafted rose, if you get sprouts from below the crown, the hybrid part is gone. The resulting roses will not be recognizable or very desirable. Many roses are grafted on a root stock of vigorous, hardy roses chosen for their good rooting abilities, not their flower beauty.

With so-called "own root" roses, (not grafted) any new canes will be true.

Winter-killed trees will also try to grow, then die, but there may be no regrowth generally.

With other perennials, the foliage is probably black and prostrate on the ground. Time is the only way to tell what is going on in the root, so don't be too hasty in removing them.

By the way, put all that dead plant material (however, slimy) on your compost pile. It is well on the way to becoming useful.

As you may know, the U.S. Department of Agriculture publishes Zone charts.  While the average gardener assumes that if plants are suitable for their zone they will thrive. Really, the main or maybe only value of knowing your zone is as a predictor of how cold it gets in that zone historically and whether a plant can be expected to survive winter temperatures there.

The flaw lies in the fact that some plants are much more tolerant of high temperatures than others, same with humidity, and the USDA Zone won't give you a clue about that.
 
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David Soper, The Garden Guy, writes and lectures on gardening topics. Read more on his website, Adventures in Gardening, www.gardenguy.com