Wind Damaged Plants: Tips On Helping Plants After A Tornado
When winter weather gets wild and windy, trees can suffer. If a tornado hits your area once warmer weather returns, you may see extensive damage to your plants and garden, even if your house is spared. Tornado damage in gardens can be devastating. It can appear that all of your plants are lost. With a little effort, though, some wind damaged plants may survive. Read on to learn how to save plants after a tornado.
Assessing Wind Damaged Plants
Following a huge windstorm or a tornado, your first step will be to assess the damage to your trees. Although garden plants may also be damaged, assess damaged trees and large shrubs first since broken limbs may be dangerous. Helping plants after a tornado is second to your family’s safety. So assess whether tornado plant damage to trees and shrubs have created risks to your home or family.
Evaluate broken trunks and split branches to see if they are threatening a structure or a power line. If so, remove them as quickly as possible. If the job is too large for you to handle, call in for emergency tree removal assistance.
If tree trunks or huge branches are broken, the tree or shrub may not be salvageable. The bigger the tornado plant damage to a tree, the lower its chances of recovery. A tree or shrub that holds onto half of its branches and leaves may very well recover.
After you have removed garden trees that cannot be saved, you can review the other tornado damage in gardens. It’s time to learn how to save plants after a tornado.
Trees and shrubs that can be saved will need help. Prune off hanging branches or broken branch tips, making the cuts just above branch buds. Bolt together main trunk sections that are split. For tornado damage in gardens to smaller plants, the process is quite similar. Inspect wind damaged plants, keeping an eye out for broken stems and branches.
How to save plants after a tornado? You’ll want to prune off the damaged sections of stems and branches. That doesn’t apply with equal force to leaves, however. When it comes to shredded leaves, allow as many to remain as you can since they’ll be needed for photosynthesis.
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Teo Spengler has been gardening for 30 years. She is a docent at the San Francisco Botanical Garden. Her passion is trees, 250 of which she has planted on her land in France.
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