QuestionQUESTION: I live in the Dallas, Texas and our Crape Myrtle Trees are not blooming. We have lots of pods but very little flower buds with few flowers during the summer. This fall should we remove the pods by cutting the ends off or by stripping them off the branches. Our trees are 7 years old and we water and fertilize on a regular schedule.
ANSWER: Too things that slow crept myrtle from blooming--not enough sunlight and the need for fertilizer, Not much you can do about the sunlight beyond moving the tree and this may cause more damage than it is worth. I would fertilize the tree with 10-10-10 fertilizer at the rate of 1 lb of fertilizer per inch of trunk diameter scattered around the tree and watered in good. Fertilize just before a rain storm and you will not need to water.
IF you have been fertilizing the tree maybe getting too much nitrogen fertilizer, which produces foliage but not blooms.
If the tree is getting plenty of sunshine and isn抰 an old tree in need of pruning, it could be the soil. In this case, if you want to make crepe myrtle bloom, you might want to check the soil and see if it might not have enough phosphorus or too much nitrogen. Both of these situations can cause there to be no flowers on crepe myrtle.
Heavily fertilized garden beds and lawns may have too much nitrogen which promotes healthy leaves but fails to make crepe myrtle bloom. You might want to add a little bonemeal around the tree which adds phosphorus over time to the soil.
Check with your garden store on how to take a soil sample.
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QUESTION: Should we remove the pods from the branches this Fall? The tree is a perfect size and gets received full sun all day long.
AnswerYou can remove old, dried seed heads during the winter if you wish, but it is only cosmetic. Crape myrtle branches will always die back by 6 to 8 inches each winter. Even if you do not remove the seedpods, the new growth will begin at the bases of the dead twigs. That new growth will quickly overtake the parts that have died back.
