For those of you that have been growing in the mid-Atlantic much longer than me, how many winters can you remember having had dieback similar to this especially on figs and pomegranates? This looks very uncharacteristic to my eyes--I mean there are old mature fig trees completely died to ground.

How often has this kind of winter happened in our parts? I'm hoping you guys tell me it hasn't happened in 20 years so I can pretend it won't again, but I'm holding my breath.

Also, exactly what was it that killed off so much wood???

I've heard some say it was dessicating winds in Feb perhaps--was it really that windy compared to normal? If it is just wind, would some light burlap have helped a lot? It seems to me that a little protection went a lot further this winter than tree maturity. Tree maturity counted for nothing it seems big guys dying back all the way to ground, but my baby little ones that were protected had more reasonable dieback...

In my opinion, the issue causing so much dieback was the length of below freezing temps combined with wind. The ground was so frozen that plants couldn't get any water to the stems/buds to prevent complete dessication and death.

I saw this a lot with evergreen broadleaf ornamentals (Holly, Euonymous, Laurel), same should apply to plant stems that are pushing it in these climates (figs, poms, crape myrtle, southern magnolia).

After the dieback ten years ago I covered my figs completely for the next five years. I had huge tents of aluminum bubble wrap over them. That works great but its a lot of work and at some point I stopped doing it.

Scott