I have a two story Crape Myrtle in my front yard. I love the tree/shrub itself, but what I dont love is it seems to sprout mini crape myrtles up all over my lawn. If I dont pull them out with the root and instead just cut them with the lawnmower I am left with hard tiny stumbs in the lawn.
Is there anyway I can get this tree to STOP shooting out all over the lawn?
Unfortunately, that's just something that crapes do. There's a product that you can buy called "sucker stopper" or something like that, I'm not sure how well it works because I've never tried it myself. I'm sure it's not perfect, but it might cut down on the number of sprouts that you get.
Good luck! At a former workplace a Crape Myrtle there shot a sucker out under the cement driveway (about 15 feet wide) and sent a shoot up in a small, and I mean small, garden area (2 feet by 10 feet) by the front doors that was growing at a great rate right in the corner. It took two men over an hour to get it all dug out for tansfer to another area! I know because one of them was my husband. I mention this because I saw you have a sidewalk. Don't be surprised if you get "little visitors" on the other side.
ecrane3,
Are you saying that crepe myrtles produce underground runners that will come up a distance from the parent plant? Oh, boy, I hope that's what you're saying. I have several crepe myrtles in an area where that would be great.
Karen
I've never seen them send out runners, what I've seen mine do is send up a bunch of suckers from the base. They're one of those plants that isn't really sure whether it wants to be a shrub or a tree, so if you've got it pruned as a tree it'll tend to send up sprouts from the base trying to turn itself back into a shrub. I don't know if it also sends out runners or not, I had a fairly old CM at my old house and never found anything that looked like it had come up via runners, but that doesn't mean it's impossible, all my other crapes have been very young and I haven't watched them for enough years for them to have started doing that if they were going to.
The sucker stopper spray I mentioned may help with sprouts coming up from the base, but I doubt it would do much if it's sending out runners and popping up elsewhere, I think that happens by a different mechanism than the suckers.
Yes this thing sends out runners 15 feet away from the main tree. I also dig two up 3 years ago in the backyard and there is NO parent tree. They still pop up in bunches of 10-15 sprouts EVERY week. I have been pulling them out by the root for 3 years now and this thing is relentless.
ecrane3,
I just planted my crepe myrtles this summer, but I'm not going to be pruning them into a tree, just leaving them as a bush. The suckers will be welcome here.
vonedaddy,
I also had no idea they put out underground runners. I have them on an open hillside where it won't matter if they do that. I've found that Bambi doesn't like crepe myrtle.
Thanks for the info from both of you. I really appreciate it.
Karen
My crapes have never done the underground runner thing, maybe it's only certain cultivars that do that, or maybe they only do it in climates where they get more summer water than they do here. I've never met one that doesn't send up suckers from the base though, but if you're growing it as a shrub then that doesn't really matter, just make sure to thin it out every year or two to keep it from getting too dense.
