hey friends welcome to gardening with Creekside today we are going to cover a
very hot topic down here in the South how to properly trim and prune your
crape myrtles we did this on Facebook a couple of weeks ago about the improper
way to prune your crape myrtle and y'all went bananas so we are actually standing
in front of our house this is our front yard and we have three of the Natchez
crape myrtles now the Natchez are the ones that produce those nice big white
blooms and they are huge Natchez can get twenty feet tall 20 feet wide so I
wanted to come here and show you first what a properly prune crape myrtle looks
like so you can see that the trunk of this guy is pretty massive these are
only gosh maybe twelve thirteen years old and they have grown they love this
spot but you see that we have about five main trunks down here at the bottom so
you want to make sure you have odd numbers of your trunk notice that this
has the gorgeous bark that peels off that's another great attraction for
crape myrtles is just the go gorgeous bark color on here so if you improperly
prune your crape myrtles you will not get that so you see there's not a lot of
small spindly twigs around here and the little branches they are all nice and
big when you go up the tree goes up and has a nice big canopy a good rule of
thumb I learned from if you're a fan of Southern Living magazine grumpy the
gardener love that guy he's fantastic he says if a bird can fly through your
crape myrtle it is perfect you don't want it really clustered so this is a
great example of what a properly pruned crape myrtle looks like now let's go and
actually prune a crape myrtle so now we have moved back here to the back of our
house where we have three crepe myrtles that bless their hearts
they need some help so this is a great tutorial on how they should not look and
how we're going to actually fix this so for whatever reason these varieties of
crepe myrtles and I cannot remember what they are are really really bad about
producing suckers suckers are all of these little sticks down here come in
shoots coming from the bottom you do not want this
just like those Natchezes is up front we want to have three to five main trunks
there are the main trunks in here but the suckers have taken over I haven't
pruned this probably in like two years and you can see that so what we're going
to do is we're going to get rid of those guys now some of the main tools that
you're going to need to prune your crape myrtle for the little small branches
just a good pair of little hand pruners if you've watched me before you know I
love these so get a good quality pair of hand pruners you will get your extra
pair of hands you'll love it for the bigger pieces we're going to use these
lovers that will get all of those suckers on the bottom now if you were to
have some really big ones if you had I mean if you wanted to use a chainsaw you
can use a chainsaw but really you shouldn't have ever let any of those
branches get thinking that that you really need to use a chainsaw so both of
these will take care of it now when you're printing it come all the
way down I'm have to battle the leaves and the all the stuff you're gonna want
to prune it's close to the trunk of a tree that you can possibly get and
you're going to - this is a tough one -I'm battling the tree okay we got it alright so you're gonna prune
all of these guys out so here we go oh {music}
right now you can see what a major difference just cleaning up those
suckers has made now this is where the artistic ability you've got to kind of
channel your inner artist and you have to ask yourself do I want to leave this
limb on here so I'm gonna say no we're not gonna leave this guy on here
why if I take him out I'll have three good main trunks and if you'll notice
this guy's like going off to the side and it makes the tree look unbalanced so
we're gonna go ahead and take him out this will be interesting
cuz that's that big guy can't get the angle right on this one mm-hmm
you know a girl needs a workout it'll get your heart rate going if you do it
right and it also works your muscles you know when you're wrestling a tree like
this and you gotta use good lobbers Jenny won all right so now we're pretty
much done using the big guys and you can see I mean look how tall those limbs
were coming up off the bottom of this tree so that is not good that was
sucking up a lot of energy on the tree now I didn't tell you the perfect time
to trim your crepe myrtles is really right now and now is late February here
in North Carolina and late winter is the perfect time to trim your crepe myrtles
they bloom on new growth so it's totally fine you're not gonna be cutting off any
blooms you're just trim it up making it look good so now
we're gonna use our little clippers and you're gonna come in here and you're
just gonna trim up any little short limbs that are coming sometimes they'll
just snap off crape myrtles will do that a lot but use your little clippers it
kind of saves your hand again cut as close to the branch as you can get you
don't want to leave a big stem out you want to cut it as flush as you possibly
can and again you're just going to go through and you're just going to kind of
clean it up and you can tell that this bark is coming off so again it's a great
tree showing us lots of pretty foliage like this guy right here I'm going to go
ahead and take him out any branches that are kind of sticking out impeding the
airflow you want to get rid of anything that's at least four feet low you want
to take out if you have branches that are crossed
rubbing take those guys out it's really kind of at this point an artistic what
looks good to you clean it up make it look happy
put a haircut for a tree you know think of it that way you're not amputating the
tree you're just simply cleaning the tree up probably I'm gonna go ahead and
take out this guy too right here just this limb because it's awful close and
it gets kind of cluttered up there so I'm gonna go back to my big lobbers and
cut this off so you'll know how to put your lobbers in here so that you get the
most flush cut boom good alright so you can tell that
she is a much happier prettier more attractive crape myrtle now remember you
want to get rid of those the limbs that are crossing each other
or the little tiny limbs do not take your crape myrtle and cut it straight
across don't do that don't give it a flattop
it's called crape murder we don't believe in murder around here so trim it
don't murder it why do you not do that because it's yes it will bloom every
year you're gonna get blooms if you do that but you're going to produce one a
ton more shoots just like it had a bunch of suckers down here if we were to come
in here and just chop it off you're gonna get a lot of baby suckers coming
from that cut and those limbs are gonna be very small they're not going to be
able to handle the weight of those big blooms so you could get floppy
especially if you have storms come through when it's not going to be as
strong also you know buy the crape myrtle for the size of where you want to
put it we had those masses up front of our house that's great they are a good
distance away from our house they accent the house we would never plant those
right on the corner of our house it's just not a good idea
there are crape myrtles that come in every shape size and color so make sure
that you pick one that is the right size for your space if you want to put a
crape myrtle up in front of like right in front of your house great go for it
but make sure you get one that doesn't get 30 feet tall maybe you only needed 8
to 10 feet tall or you want the dwarf ones that only get 3 to 4 feet tall so
just educate yourself on the different types of crape myrtles out there come to
us and talk to us say hey I really want a crape myrtle I wanted to go into space
which would be an appropriate one to put it there so that's a great thing to do
talk to your local nurserymen and they will be able to recommend to you the
appropriate crape myrtle for the space that you're looking at I hope this has
been helpful and informative I hope that you know now know how to properly prune
a crape myrtle and we appreciate you and thanks for Gardening with Creekside