A guy at the feed store in Tyler told me topping a crepe myrtle makes it sprout 3x worse, and he was dead on
I was picking up a bag of soil last Tuesday and the old timer behind the counter saw my truck loaded with pole saws and asked what I was cutting. When I said crepe myrtles that got hacked back bad last season, he said topping just wakes up every bud below the cut and you get a broom instead of a tree. I went back to two jobs I'd topped in March and counted six shoots off every stub, so he was right. Now I'm trying to talk clients out of it before I even start. How do you all handle the folks who just want it cut down to the fence line?