Patti, Oh, your poor trees!

After the ice has melted, you can proceed with caution and clean up what is on the ground beneath the trees. Watch for additional falling limbs because pecan tree limbs are pretty brittle and can break off pretty easily. My 40- to 50-year old native pecan trees shed limbs fairly often---not just from ice damage, but wind damage, drought damage, etc.

Other than removing damaged limbs, there's not much you can do at the present time. Trees are pretty resilient and generally bounce back pretty well on their own as long as they haven't lost a high percentage of the crown. You do want to avoid over fertilizing in an effort to help the tree recover---just give each tree the normal amount of fertilizer recommended. You don't want to overstimulate the tree and have it produce too much topgrowth that its trunk would have trouble supporting.

The OFS has a page on tree recovery following icestorms. On that page, there's 11 linked documents that contain info about helping trees recover from damage. One of them even has line drawings that help you estimate what percentage of the crown has been lost. I'm going to link that page here and you can click on any of the linked pages to read the info on them. I know the first two are about ice recovery as they are bulletins updated after last year's ice storms.

Specific to pecan trees, I'm not sure if there is anything a homeowner could do on their own. Sometimes the folks who have pecan orchards will do some grafting to damaged trees to help replace the crown if too much of it was lost. One of our forum members, Scott, has a pecan orchard in NE OK. Maybe he'll see this post and respond.

Good luck with your trees,

Dawn

Oklahoma Forestry Service: Ice Storm Damage & Recovery

Thanks Dawn. This is just the information I was hoping for. Woke up this morning and finally all the ice has melted, so I'll get out there in a bit to get the clean up process started. At least we still have our electricity. Our little town doesn't and our school is closed.

You're welcome. I bet the kids are happy! Any unexpected day off always causes great rejoicing among the young 'uns. I'm glad you have your electricity. That makes the whole ice storm not quite as bad, though the tree damage is always so unfortunate.

Our pecan trees have been tough. Ice, borers and more are normal for pecans but under that long drought we had many didn't make it. I imagine it will be fine with normal care if you're not in a drought zone. Still makes me sad. I think pecan trees are glorious in their own right.