Hello friends welcome to Gardening with Creekside today we have a uh a fun little task ahead of us
we are going to uh prune shape up thin out these three natchez crepe myrtles that are in the big
flower bed in front of our house these crepe myrtles have been here for uh gosh okay been
in the house 18 years let's just say somewhere around 15 years um and they are big and they are
beautiful they are coming back into bloom they are a gorgeous white flowering uh crepe myrtle nachos
are white but the japanese beetles got hold of all the blooms and ate them all off and so they are
trying now to come back and flush out their next set of blooms which they would have been if the
beetles hadn't got them but what we need to talk about and i want to show you so these three crepe
myrtles are huge right and they're big and they're beautiful and they're doing really what i want
them to do but there is a thing with crepe myrtles is that we want to keep them more limbed up like
this one so it has a nice upright canopy on it you can see this one down here on the end it is a
little bit more downturned and providing a little bit more shade for this bed than what i want and
so we're going to come in here we're going to thin out the canopy because i read one time where with
a crepe myrtle you want to prune it so that a bird can fly through the top and you can see
that this one is not that bad right there this is i my opinion is going to be the easiest one to do
but as we progress down you can see how it gets thicker and thicker so i want to thin that out
because it is getting a little bit too much shade i have the summer rhythmic hibiscus in here
and they've been in here for many years and have done great but as the crepe myrtles have grown
especially these ones here on this side they have gotten less and less sun and you can see this one
right here is just absolutely pathetic i mean it is just i mean there's like maybe what five
stalks on that thing and i know it's because it's not getting enough sun because when you come down
right here that's cranberry crush and it is nice and full especially on the front side where you
can see that it's getting the afternoon sun on this side it is not as big because it's not
getting as much sun so we want to raise up this canopy thin it out so that these plants will get
some more sun now i am fully aware that these um trees obviously as they get bigger they are going
to provide more shade and i'm totally fine with that i've got some hydrangeas in here i'm already
thinking about how can i turn this into like a part shade bed so that's my train of thought
crepe myrtles um do provide this beautiful canopy they are deciduous so in the wintertime they're
going to be not going to have any foliage on them again that doesn't bother me whatsoever at all
and you can tell that some of them have trunks that have that three to five that's the optimal
you know number three to five this one you can see has a lot more than that but crepe myrtles
are great too because they have such fun bark so you can pull the bark off and this is that
time of year where it's starting to peel and it just provides a whole different layer and
texture to the tree because it's got that peeling bark so what we're going to do is i have got
my ladder i've got my trusty furry companion right here that's going to keep me entertained
the ladder then i brought the flatbed trailer so i'm going to put the limbs on that um
once everything is done we're going to start with this first one so let's go up here and let me show
you and kind of like my thought process on what i am going to do now i am not going to take out
any of the main trunks i am not going to go that far on this however when i have branches that are
coming out that are more thin say like these guys right here i'm going to take those out
and i'm going to try to see how much of my ladder i can get out in those thin limbs i'm going to saw
and just really leave these nice big huge limbs obviously i cannot get up that far into the tree
and that's okay i mean at some point you just have to say it is what it is but um yep so that's
what we're going to do jare's here with me so he's going to be some of assistants and helping me film
and the great thing about this is that yes it is the middle of the afternoon but hey we're in the
shade so it's okay this is i've been wanting to do this since this probably last fall and i told
myself okay i'm gonna do it in the winter time before it flushes out but now it really is nice
to do it now because i can see how much sun shade i actually get by taking out these limbs i don't
think you could probably ever prune a crepe myrtle at the wrong time these things are really like
indestructible is it the optimal time probably not so that this is not a tutorial on the optimal time
to prune your crepe myrtle but again i have time i'm here the weather is cooperating i'm doing it
all right so i'm gonna get everything set up and then we'll show you really what we're gonna do
okay so we have gotten the first crepe myrtle um thinned out after i thought about the first
two limbs jerry was like uh huh don't you need the pole saw
time to pull out the big guns people so that's what we did now are there more limbs that we could
take out i am sure but i'm of the the school of thought of you can always take out more you can't
put it back so you can see that we have thinned it out now here those limbs are all gone let's
that light in here this would be the morning sun from this direction and then back on this side
is the afternoon sun coming in so for this first crepe myrtle i feel i feel pretty good about it um
again if you wanted to go up further and take little guys out you certainly could but i think
overall that's a really nice open habit on this crepe myrtle and then what we're going
to do is just do more of the same for the next two these to me are a lot more congested and
thick inside and it's not really big limbs that need to come out it's a bunch of little thin limbs
to just really open up that canopy allow some more sunlight in and a little bit more air circulation
in those guys so we will be working on that but yeah here we go we're just going to
get out all the power tools and the hand saws and the clippers and we're just gonna go for it
all right my friends it is done and wow what a difference it makes especially looking at it from
this perspective like you can you can see through uh again the first one was not as bad but it was
the second and third one that really just jerry got a hold of that pole saw man and he was having
some fun cleaning it up but look at that like you can actually see through now and that hibiscus
look at it the red one that cranberry crush it is getting full sun all around
so this definitely opened up lots of room lots of canopy lots more sunlight is coming in
and could we have taken out some more little guys yeah i'm sure we could have but that certainly
is a really good start to what we um do what it did look like and the plants are going to be so
much happier because these are full sun to part sun plants and they were definitely not getting
some of those the hours that they needed so the take away as far as crepe myrtles and how to prune
your crepe myrtles because this is very important in my humble southern garden gardener opinion is
that when you're pruning your crepe myrtle you really are going for that fantastic
aesthetic look you want your crepe myrtle to look like a tree narrow at the bottom
full canopy at the top there's a thing that happens here in the south north carolina i
don't know i think it's the whole south um i can just speak from our experiences here it's called
we call it its nickname crepe murder and it is where folks who honestly just they just don't know
any better and they take their crepe myrtle and they give it a flat top so every like late winter
early spring they come in and just cut it straight across and it just looks awful and so that only
produces weak stems you want really nice strong thick stems that will just grow and be happy and
produce lots of foliage and lots of flowers for you so as your crepe myrtle grows if you have like
if you're starting out with a small one like when we did with ours you're going to every year once
a year go out there and you're going to have to make decisions of who goes and who stays typically
crepe myrtles will have three to five main trunks at the bottom it's not a hard fast rule there are
crepe myrtles that have been trained to have a single stem obviously some of ours have more
that's not that big of a deal and i think they say three to five because it's that odd number
right aesthetically it looks good and then as it grows you limit up you take those limbs that are
hanging low and you bring up your canopy so that you can have this gorgeous top and these beautiful
trunks that show all of that great how the bark is peeling it's beautiful you want to
showcase that so you need to limb them up so it doesn't matter if your crepe myrtle
is a natchez and can get 20 to 30 feet tall or if it's a shorter variety it only gets 12 feet tall
just limit up clean it up make it neat and tidy if you get suckers around the bottom you want to
prune those off as soon as you see them just take them off and eventually that eventually it should
stop happening but you don't want suckers around the base of your tree just get those cleaned up
so the main takeaway from today don't commit commit crepe murder don't do the flat top no no no
and then nice vase like skinny at the bottom nice and full up top once a year go in there limit up
clean it up take out the weak stems leave the strong sturdy stems as always thanks so much for
guarding with creekside y'all have a fantastic day and we'll see in the next video bye friends
do
you