This is a hard call. Crape myrtles are native to the subtropics. The
subtropics do experience frost, but rarely. However, crape myrtles do go
dormant as soon as cooler weather becomes consistent (temps below 40 at
night). It is not unusual however, for the subtropics to experience
prolonged warm spells in winter, followed by more cool weather. During those
periods, sometimes crape myrtles will leaf out, and then lose their leaves
again if another frost strikes. Generally this didn't kill my crape myrtles,
but they were in the ground. I guess I would advise keeping th plant which
is leafing out "barely alive" -meaning not watering until the soil is quite
dry on top, keeping it in the very coolest part of the room, as long as
there is sufficient light, etc. In February and March, as the light gets
stronger, you could increase watering, maybe fertilize lightly - and
obviously as the days get warm enough, perhaps as early as mid-April, start
keeping it outside in a very sheltered location.
"Wishy13764" wrote in message
...
I had some cuttings from my outdoor hardy crape myrtle. During this past
spring, I had planted some of them in small 12" pots to see if they would
survive. They did and in fact 2 of them even bloomed slightly. Being in
NYC,
with oncoming Fall and winter, I dragged them indoors after they had shown
their Fall leafs color and dropped all leaves. A couple of them went into
a
cool unheated basement with so far temperatures have not gone below 59
degrees.
The other 2 are in another unheated room, but the temp there has not gone
below
68 degrees. This was all done in mid October or early november..don't
recall
exactly. I was told while they are in a dormant stage to water sparingly,
like
once a month or a couple of weeks. I never watered them enough to cover
the
depth of the pots. Now, to my suprise today, I happened to notice that the
branches of the 68 degrees are starting to sport leaves, not so with the
basement one. I don't know what to do now. Should I start watering it as I
did
when they were outside or just stop watering them and hope it drops its
new
leaves and go dormant again? If I do start watering them again should I
also
fertilize them because they are in pots? Hopefully someone here who has
knowledge of these shrubs would assist me? BTW, the sticker just says
"Hardy
crape myrtle"...no other title. I do have the parent shrub now almost 15
years.