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Cooperative Extension Service |
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Agricultural
Experiment Station |
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Dale Bumpers College
Division Home |
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| Dustin Blakey County Extension Agent - Agriculture |
Jesse Bocksnick County Extension Agent - 4-H |
[Title slide - River Valley Gardening, Crapemyrtles, Dustin Blakey County Extension Agent for the University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture]
[Dustin] Hi, this is Dustin Blakey with the county Extension Office. Right now a lot of people are wondering about their crapemyrtles: when's the right time to prune them and how should they prune these things? Most of what you see around here is not the right way to take care of crapemyrtles. There is no reason to take a perfectly good shrub and chop it back within an inch of its life. It doesn't look very attractive and the whole reason we plant crapemyrtles is because they are a very attractive tree all year round.
[Pictures showing crapemyrtles that have been severely pruned] What you're looking at here are some examples of local jobs that have been done on crapemyrtles. You'll see they've been topped back pretty severely. Again, this is not the way to take care of a crapemyrtle. Even though you may see this in commercial landscapes, don't take this as an example of what you need to be doing!
[Video showing proper way to prune a crapemyrtle] The way you want to prune a crapemyrtle when you do decide they need some kind of care is to use a rule of thumb not to cut anything bigger than a pencil. A lot of times these plants will have a bunch of growth on the inside that's not attractive. It's OK to thin out some of this, but for the most part, you'll want to leave it alone. It has a nice form naturally. A lot of people find these seed pods unattractive. There's nothing wrong with getting rid of them, although it will not hurt the plant by leaving it there.
[Pictures of various crapemyrtles] The reason why most people decide to prune them heavily initially is that crapemyrtles were bigger than they thought they were going to be and it turns out after 20 years, it's 20 feet tall. That's because many crapemyrtle varieties are actually trees. The solution here is that when you are planting a crapemyrtle is to go and select a variety that will fit your property the way you want it to be. You can get a full-size one like Natchez that's going to get 25-30 feet tall, you can get something medium-sized like Pink Velour - it might be about 18 feet, and they even have dwarf varieties of crapemyrtle that won't get any taller than about 3 feet like Pocomoke. And so by choosing the right variety you don't have to do any drastic pruning of a crapemyrtle. You can let it be in its natural form and enjoy it.
[Dustin] To find out which varieties we can plant in Arkansas, we're really fortunate in that we have a plant database that has all the crapemyrtle varieties you may find and their characteristics like their bark color, whether or not they're susceptible to disease, and how tall they get. [Pictures of various crapemyrtles]
[Computer screen showing Google search engine] The easiest way to find this website is to go to Google and type in "Arkansas crapemyrtle database". The first hit you'll get is our database. It has a very extensive list sorted by the size. And that's what I recommend you use to find out what kind of crapemyrtle you'd like to plant. [Screenshot of the Arkansas Crapemyrtle Database web page]
[Dustin] If you have any questions about crapemyrtles or need to be convinced in person not to top them, please feel free to contact me at the Extension office.
[Title slide] Questions? Contact your County Extension Office dblakey@uaex.edu.
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