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Category: Things That Grow In My Garden | Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2009 5:03 am

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Crepe Myrtle Weed :-) ( photo / image / picture from Accidental Gardener's Garden )

If you are a tree that blooms and then dump your billions of rotting petals upon the ground and cover everything and anything below you - you just may be a weed.

If someone actually has to keep peeling off your bark on a regular basis and you do not die - you just may be a weed.

If someone can cut off ALL your limbs in February and not only don't you die but you actually grow them back by June - you just may be a weed.

If you keep sprouting suckers and branches where suckers and branches are not suppose to grow - you just may be a weed.

If you cannot be removed cut down or dug out of the ground and burned and you still send up new replacement shoots in the spring - you just may be a weed.

I know that up North we would have no problem classifying you as an undesirable plant - thus a weed. A real tree cannot survive what is done to you day in and day out.

What you are is the luckiest weed in the yard because you actually have these good people fooled into thinking you are a real tree. And they are very willing to pay good money at an expensive nursery to purchase you; when all they have to do is remove a sucker that is growing below ground level and plant you wherever they want you to grow. Full sun, shade, good soil, bad soil it just does not matter. My Southern belle wife does it all the time.

We have three of you growing right now. I have never watered, fed or nurtured any of you. While many real plants around you that were watered, fed and nurtured have died and are long forgotten, all three of you crepe myrtles are just thriving. Go figure!

Now, repeat after me, I am not a real tree, I am a weed. Albeit a beautiful weed seven to ten days out of the year.







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Frank wrote on Wed Nov 18, 2009 9:38 am:

I got a laugh from this AG, thanks :D

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Frank wrote on Wed Nov 18, 2009 9:40 am:

BTW have you thought about using a stump killer?

http://www.gardenstew.com/about1363.html

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gfreiherr wrote on Wed Nov 18, 2009 12:50 pm:

Many gardeners perform "myrtle murder" by cutting them back to a stump, then they end up with a crape myrtle bush that keeps on going... They are pretty when they bloom but they can get out of control, just like a weed!

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toni wrote on Wed Nov 18, 2009 2:52 pm:

We have two that are around 40 years old and one that is only a little over 20 years old. I let them grow as they will. They are at least 30 feet tall, providing great shade for the front of our house on hot summer afternoons.
They bloom continuously from June thru October covered with beautiful hot pink and magenta blooms.

They don't have to be watered more than what nature gives them, they live on the nutrients found in the soil and the only trimming I have to do is to remove the lower hanging limbs over the sidewalk and curb side. The dead blossoms land on the garden below and add their nutrients back into the soil.

I love my Crepe Myrtles.

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Jewell2009 wrote on Sat Nov 21, 2009 10:47 am:

I was once told that a weed is only a plant in the wrong place. I love most weeds, they are plants that don't die. If I don't love them stump killer does "usually" work.

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