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Certified arborist in Tulsa told me to cut back my crepe myrtles hard every spring, and now they look like green trash cans
A guy with 22 years on the crew over in Tulsa gave me this tip at a Saturday workshop back in February 2024. He swore that chopping crepe myrtles down to knee height every spring forces thicker blooms and a tighter shape. So I did it on 3 trees in my front yard, and by July I had nothing but knobby stubs and half the flowers I usually get. My neighbor's untouched crepe myrtle is still packed with pink while mine looks like a busted broom. Anybody here actually cut theirs back that hard and get good results, or did I just wreck 3 years of growth for nothing?
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lopez.simon10d ago
That hard chop every year is basically crepe murder and it does way more harm than good over time. When you cut back to knee height you're cutting off all the old wood where the flower buds would normally form, so the tree panics and pushes out those ugly knobby stubs trying to survive. Then it spends all its energy making leaves and new shoots instead of blooms, which is why yours looks like a busted broom while your neighbor's untouched one is covered in pink. The whole "hard prune for more flowers" thing is a myth, the most flowers actually come from letting them grow tall and just trimming the dead stuff or crossing branches in late winter. Give yours a couple seasons of light pruning only and they should bounce back, but yeah those stubs will stay knobby for a while.
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