If you want suckers, take a shovel and dig straight down about three feet from the plant in one or two places. This will sever some roots and the plant will send up suckers at that place. And really I don't mean dig. I mean just jam the shovel straight into the ground as far as you can.

Crepe Myrtles root easily too....so you can take cuttings earlier in the year.

Terrence, Are you talking about common suckers that pop up in the general location of the mother plant? It is common for them to do that and I've always used suckers as dbarron and Dorothy described above to start new plants. If your 20-year-old crepe myrtle is sending out long underground roots with suckers coming up quite a distance from the plant, I have heard that this happens sometimes, but haven't seen it happen on any crape myrtles I've grown. Both suckers and runners can occur as a stress reaction to very dry conditions or to very wet conditions in poorly drained soil. Sometimes the plants send out suckers/runners when a plant is stressed in an effort to alleviate the stress or to produce new plants that will carry on if the stressed plant dies.

I'm not sure I've ever seen a crape myrtle die though. They're pretty hard to kill.

Dawn

I have...in terrible conditions (like strip hells in parking lots). Quite rare though :)

What would make a crape myrtle stop fail to bloom? I have about 25 around my yard. Recently, I have begun to cut them back more carefully, and dig out some.

There have always been discussions about crape murder, but none about taking out canes in the winter, and reducing the count to about 5-7. Once I did that, they have never looked so pretty.

I just wonder what happens that would allow one to grow, but not bloom.

Sammy

Thanks. I thought mine died a few years back. It has vines coming up a few feet from it. But they run along the top of the ground.
Then every few feet they have a few leaves.

I have a 25 year old crepe myrtle that died back to the ground when it was a couple or four years old during a severe below zero cold snap. That was the only time it did though. A few limbs have died back since and because it is a very tall one, I can't get up to cut them off.