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Q. Will watering protect my tender plants when it freezes?
A. One of the common things people want to do is to sprinkle plants with water, and that doesn't do a lot of good. If you water the soil until it's adequately moist, it will provide a sort of heat sink that during a cold night will rise up and give a few degrees of protection for your plants, especially if you cover them. But, if you overwater, you create problems for the roots. And, just sprinkling creates ice that can crackle your plant apart with large ice loads on the branches. So, I don't recommend watering or sprinkling the foliage. It doesn't do any good. In fact, it can work against you because as it starts to thaw, the opposite happens and you can get super cooling of the interior as the exterior of the ice is thawing.
If you want to protect plants, the best way to do it is throw a cover over them--a blanket, or some heavy row cover that holds the soil heat underneath them. Don't wrap them up. If you wrap a plant up like a landscape lollipop, all you're doing is excluding the rising heat from getting around the branches and the trunk. Get a large (fabric) tarp over the top, all the way to the ground, and hold that heat. If you add a source of heat, such as some light bulbs underneath the blanket, you can do it a little even more good. Do not use plastic. When the sun comes out the next morning, you risk frying your plants. |
Mexican White Oak (Quercus polymorpha)
 Want a fast growing tree that is also long lived and well suited to Central Texas landscapes? Mexican white oak, also called Monterey oak, is all that and more. It reaches a mature size of 30 to 45 feet in height and width. Mexican White Oak does not have any significant insect or disease problems. A member of the white oak group, it is resistant to oak wilt. As with many trees, deer may browse the foliage of Mexican white oak when the tree is small but don't bother larger trees. This oak starts off growing very upright and rather pyramidal in form but finishes out into a more rounded form, making it an excellent shade tree. Foliage remains on the tree late in the season, dropping before the emergence of new leaves. Mexican white oak does well in a variety of soils including our high pH central Texas soils.
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