This week, a question whose answer involves one of the worst winter storms in North Texas in living memory.
Q: I have three crapemyrtles that have done poorly over the past few years – they have barely bloomed, and the bark on one side of the plants appears scaly, grey, and dead-looking. I also have an older shade tree in the yard with a big crack down the bark of the trunk, and this year it’s growing a whole line of white shelf-like mushrooms in a six-foot stretch from ground level although it looks OK up top. How can I help these plants do better? Can I use some sort of fungicide on the tree?
A: The answer is a bit drastic, but it’s the crapemyrtles that are the plants that are likely recoverable.
Winter Storm Uri did tremendous damage to trees and ornamental shrubs in North Texas. Most of the area fell under zero degrees, and to make things even worse, temperatures had been in the seventies for weeks prior. Very little was ready for the level of cold we experienced, including us as gardeners! Bark froze, causing radial frost cracking even on well established trees and scalding the bark enough to kill large patches outright.
Add four years’ worth of decay, and your landscape is where it is right now. To treat the current situation, we’d recommend you wait until winter and cut those crapemyrtles flush with the ground. New trunks will grow from the cut base, and these trunks will not be heavily damaged the way yours currently are. As a bonus, you have such a well-established root system that the new trunks will grow with astonishing speed – in a few years, you’ll have a good-looking, tall crape myrtle once more. Prune out trunks that are tangled, at weak angles, or growing back into the main body of the plant after the first year of new growth, and the crapemyrtle will be off to a good start.
The large shade tree, despite its’ top being in good shape, is actually in worse condition. The wood of the trunk is actively decaying. It’s not a problem immediately, but the wood of the trunk will weaken over time and eventually be a safety hazard. We’d recommend you call out a certified arborist to have a look at the tree and make recommendations on site – but those recommendations will likely be for how long you can keep the tree there before you really should take it down (before it falls down, potentially on something that matters!)