How To Prune Crepe Myrtle

Crepe myrtle, sometimes spelled crape myrtle, is a showy flowering bush or tree that thrives in warm climates. It does well in USDA Plant Hardiness Zones 7 through 10, and may survive winters in Zones 5 and 6.

It flowers all summer and offers abundant, bright-colored blossoms that range from white to deep purple. Curiously, there are no orange, yellow or blue crepe myrtle flowers — although deep red, fuchsia and purple are absolute stunners.

Take care of your crepe myrtle trees or bushes and you’ll be rewarded with healthy, long-lasting, beautiful plants. Pruning crepe myrtle is a necessary step for these fast-growing trees and bushes. Here’s how to do it.

Why Prune Crepe Myrtle?

According to the pros at McCorkle Nurseries, crepe myrtle benefits from seasonal selective removal of diseased, damaged, dead, non-productive, structurally unsound or otherwise unwanted tissue.

With crepe myrtle, pruning equates to blooming. “Pruning creates new wood,” says McCorkle senior sales representative Tony Rogers. “If you leave it unpruned, it’s just going to be old wood on the end, and you’re not going to get the bloom set you want.”

When to Prune Crepe Myrtle

Crepe myrtle should be pruned right before it comes out of dormancy or right before the first appearance of new growth. In Zones 7 and higher, this will probably be January or February. If you’re growing crepe myrtle in Zones 5 or 6, you may want to wait until March to prune or after the last risk of frost. Pruning in the fall will likely leave your crepe myrtle susceptible to frost damage, especially the farther north you live.

How to Prune Crepe Myrtle

Denise Schreiber, an organic gardener and author, cautions that “the correct way to prune crepe myrtle is not to use chain saws.”  Instead, she suggests hand pruners and a small hand saw. “You can also use loppers to remove larger limbs and dead branches. This will encourage more blooms,” she explains.

To prune crepe myrtle, Rogers says to start with a pair of sharp pruning shears that you’ve cleaned thoroughly. Be sure that you’ve wiped them down with rubbing alcohol and rinsed and dried them. He offers these tips on how to proceed with pruning:

• Go sparingly and avoid pruning anything larger than the diameter of your finger. “Aggressively pruning thicker wood from crepe myrtle is a habit that’s been deemed ‘crepe murder’ by knowledgeable gardeners,” says Rogers. “You’ll still get growth and blooms, but it’s like cutting off a baseball bat. You have that big diameter there that’s not real pretty.” By sticking to cutting finger-sized branches, you’ll get the new growth which produces new blooms and a more aesthetically pleasing plant.
• Remove crossed or dead branches and trim side branches from the trunk. “Taking away extraneous interior branches will also help promote sunlight penetration,” Rogers says.
• For trees, selectively prune shoots that emerge from the base of the trunk. “Think of a multi-tiered system,” says Rogers. “Limb up to the height you want.” (In gardening lingo, “limb up” means to cut the lower branches to raise the profile and height of the tree.)
• As the plant grows, Rogers says, continue to remove lower branches and any suckers that emerge from the base. “You will shape the tree by removing branches each year, so the trunk accounts for much of the plant’s height,” he says.
• In its bushier form, the lower you trim the crepe myrtle, the more it will push out horizontally for a fuller plant.

In order to protect your plant from disease, Schreiber suggests that you “start by removing small stems all the way to the bottom of the trunk.” She continues on, explainnig that “you should end up with 5-7 main stems that accentuate the tree. Do not cut them off and leave knots on the main stems since that encourages diseases.”

About the Experts

• Tony Rogers is a senior sales representative with McCorkle Nurseries.
• Denise Schreiber is an organic gardener and the author of “Eat Your Roses, Pansies and Lavender and 49 Other Delicious Flowers” by St. Lynn’s Press. She’s also a national speaker, retired ISA Certified Arborist, All America Selections Trial Judge, a member of GardenComm, an Association of Garden Communicators, and Mrs. Know It All of The Organic Gardeners on KDKA radio.