I have great respect for Randy Lemmon and his expertise on everything in our area. He knows his plants, his products, and always has some great hints for us. But I don't know if I agree with his latest newsletter?

Today is Jan. 18. As far as I am concerned we are in the middle of Houston winter. We have had Ice storms and freezes in February. In fact they say to avoid a plant freeze in our area, do not plant until after March. 31. We try to follow that even though the days get pretty and we get the urge to plant. We have planted in mid-March only to have all the new plants freeze back on a Mar. 30 freeze.

Lemmon says it is safe to cut back the plants that have frozen back. He has hints to tell of your plant is alive. He predicts not freezes through Feb. 15, making it safe to do winter clean up. IDK?? I'm still erring on the cold side and will leave everything be until at least late Feb? Thoughts? Opinions??

http://www.ktrh.com/pages/gard...

I trimmed a little today because the weather was so nice and these plants won't care one way or the other, but I plan to leave the bulk of it until about the third week of February. Winter has been too crazy to count on warm weather from now on.

I listen to Dave Rodriguez (Texas Extension Horticulturist-San Antonio) on iHeart radio on Sat mornings 7am-10am, and Neil Sperry on Sunday mornings 8am-10am on WBAP iPhone app. That question has been asked repeatedly the last couple of weeks to due the cold weather we had. Both of them have been insistent that we need to wait and see what parts of the plants are coming back later in the spring. The reason that has been stated is that if you prune plants now and then we have some warmer weather and the plants think they are suppose to start growing and will and boom we have another freeze and it will kill them. That said this is the time to start pruning fruit trees

I agree that I will wait until late Feb to do any cleanup.

I have trimmed up some items that are clearly dead/died back, but a lot is waiting until later this month. I think waiting until late March is far too late though.

It has been a colder than average year, so who knows.