Crepe myrtle mystery

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sparkway Caldwell, NJ(Zone 7a) Jul 30, 2014

Hi I live in north NJ. I have two crepe myrtles. Both from Fast Growing Trees.com. They are several years old. They have been healthy a beautiful, however not this year. When they finally bloomed which is always late but worth the wait, each of my trees had one dead trunk. We had a terrible winter. Not sure if that's the cause. No other signs of disease. In the pic it's the trunk on the left. If I scratch at it it is still green should I give them time or cut the dead portion off? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated
Anthony

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Weerobin Saint Louis, MO(Zone 6a) Jul 31, 2014

If the 'dead' trunk is showing no sign of life yet, it's probably not viable and I'd remove the dead one all the back to the ground. Crepe myrtles are marginally hardy and a bad winter will often turn them into a 'die-back shrub', where the portion of the plant above ground dies back to the ground and vigorous new growth comes up each spring from the roots. My preference is to select a few of the most vigorous shoots and prune away the rest so you end up with a cluster of a few trunks; otherwise you can end up with a jungle. But if we keep having bad winters, you'll end up with a crepe myrtle 'shrub' regrowing each year from the ground, rather than a tree.

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