{"id":7814,"date":"2016-05-01T12:00:20","date_gmt":"2016-05-01T16:00:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/?p=7814"},"modified":"2015-08-01T19:12:35","modified_gmt":"2015-08-01T23:12:35","slug":"reviving-a-severely-damaged-crape-myrtle-in-the-spring","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/2016\/05\/01\/reviving-a-severely-damaged-crape-myrtle-in-the-spring\/","title":{"rendered":"Reviving A Severely Damaged Crape Myrtle In The Spring"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Winter-injured<\/a>

Winter-injured Crape Myrtle<\/p><\/div>\n

\"New<\/a>

New basal shoots on Winter-Injured Crape myrtle<\/p><\/div>\n

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Crape myrtles (Lagerstroemia indica <\/em>and hybrid cultivars) are rated as hardy perennials and semi-hardy shrubs or trees in USDA zone 6 and parts of zone 7. Since the year 2000, an average of 1 out of 3 winters\u00a0has killed some crape myrtles to the ground. By late May new shoots emerge from the very hardy rootsystem\u00a0below ground or from lower areas\u00a0on the shrub or tree that were not injured by\u00a0winter cold.<\/p>\n

In general, crape myrtles grow very rapidly, assisted by adequate soil moisture and spring fertilizing. New shoots\u00a0may also push out in upper parts of the plant, but are removed. It is\u00a0best to severely cutback the plant or multi-branches near the base\u00a0to invigorate numerous new\u00a0shoots to pop\u00a0out in the coming weeks<\/p>\n

Repaired crape myrtle(s)\u00a0bloom on new summer wood, so\u00a0flowering is not lost, just delayed a few weeks.<\/p>\n

Additional cultural tips: <\/strong>feed your shrub or tree crape myrtle immediately after pruning, using 10-10-10 or equivalent fertilizer. Lightly mulch around the base of the plant for a neat weed-free look.\u00a0Irrigate only during long summer dry spells. When large numbers of new shoots form, you may opt to re-prune and\u00a0eliminate all but\u00a01, 3, 0r 5 shoots. By reducing\u00a0numbers, the remaining shoots\u00a0grow taller and still bloom.<\/p>\n

Never, never<\/strong>\u00a0prune or fertilize crape myrtles in fall and through most of the winter season.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                  Crape myrtles (Lagerstroemia indica and hybrid cultivars) are rated as hardy perennials and semi-hardy shrubs or trees in USDA zone 6 and parts of zone 7. Since the year 2000, an average of 1 out of 3 winters\u00a0has killed some crape myrtles to the ground. By […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[444,914,843,1060,601,630,706,646,7,455],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7814"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7814"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7884,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7814\/revisions\/7884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7814"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7814"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/whatgrowsthere.com\/grow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}