Are you a plant killer, or are your bushes just bored with you?

Spring is the best time to plant various bushes and even some trees.  So one thing to find out now is whether the bushes you planted last year are dead and need to be replaced or if they are simply wintering.  If they're dead, you want to get them replanted as early as you can in the season so they have as much time as possible to grow and catch up with your other plants.  So how can you tell?

These are the same plant!  One is clearly not "wintering" but rather "dying."

You can see in my favorite little bush, pieris japonica, that one is clearly not "wintering" because it's companion is green and flowering.  But it still has green leaves, so I may give it another season to try and come back to life, even though judging by the base being brown it's almost all dead.  So if you don't have a companion plant to compare it to what do you do?  Look at the stems-is there green near the base of the plant?  If so, your bush is wintering and healthy.  If not, go near the base of the plant and scrape a little bit of the stem away.  Is it hollow, brown, and crackly or is there some green or hardy white there? 

And of course, each plant is different so knowing what you have is important.  I often try to keep the label of the plant on it season to season for that very reason since I'm not an expert.  Most of us know that if your evergreen bush starts looking like it's "wintering" it's dead.  Evergreens don't winter, they're hardy cold weather bushes. 

Evergreen bush in winter

Hydrangea a few weeks before spring see the hints of green?

Early spring, some green buds...

Hydrangeas on the other hand look COMPLETELY dead, which led to my research on the issue.  I spent $25 each on those four suckers, how are they dead?!?  My hydrangeas are only one season in so they are very susceptible to not surviving the winter.  But I was hopeful so I went and looked at my neighbors' hydrangeas to see what they looked like in the winter and lo and behold, while larger, they still looked just as grotesque and dead.  Yay!  Mine must be wintering!  So I left them alone and now those same dead looking stems are sprouting leaves and starting to turn green. 

And a few weeks into early spring, many leaves!

What fell out of the planter...totally dead right?

 I also had no idea that lilies are perennials and come back until my planters started sprouting all over the place.  Last season the old lilies turned into hollow sticks and broke off, so I thought I just had two planters of dirt, what a nice surprise!  Well, at least, assuming the thing that is sprouting is a lily, if not, I'll be sure to let y'all know I'm an idiot.  So apparently some plants even if the stem is totally dead are still just "wintering."  I'm assuming bulb flowers like daffodils are like this.  So really, this entire post is totally not helpful.  What am I?  Your Google?  Go find out yourself if your plants winter or not!

Or are they...

But in all seriousness, if your bushes are dead and you've googled and made sure they aren't just going to rise out of the dirt each year like daffodils or lilies, get them out of the ground and get ready to replace them as early as possible for that plant.  I got my bushes in a few weeks late last year and while they appear to have survived, they didn't grow nearly as much as they could've if I'd gotten them in during the April showers. Alright, I'm off to go dream about trying strawberries for the third year in a row and see if I can get at least one berry this time!