By The Plant LadyWhen I first moved to Florida, I thought crotons were dull and commonplace. All I ever saw were those foundation standbys, the Petra and the Mammey, and I saw them everywhere. I was much more dazzled by all the orchids, hibiscus, and oh, so many flowering trees!
But over the years I have come to love crotons. Petras are still not favorites, but I have even found beauty in the humble but colorful Mammey, though I admit it is overused, especially since there are so many other cultivars available.
There are perhaps as many as 600 varieties, although some of the older ones are out of circulation and lost to posterity, and others have become rare. But that still leaves quite a few. There is a wide variety of leaf shapes, colors and color patterns among those many cultivars, so it is worth hunting for different varieties instead of settling for the same old, same old.
Unfortunately, you will be lucky to find four or five at your local garden center and maybe a dozen or so at a typical nursery, unless it is a specialty nursery, such as Peters Crotons & Cordylines in Vero Beach (www.peterscrotonnursery.com),where you can probably find close to 200 cultivars. You can also find some of the flashier varieties by hitting the plant show circuit.
It is that wonderful promise of year-round color from your crotons that puts single-day hibiscus blooms and annually blooming orchids to shame in my mind. I probably have about 20 different croton varieties in my yard.
I don't know the names of all my crotons; some came from cuttings from friends, who are not as obsessive about names as I am, and on others, name tags faded or were lost. And many are labeled, even by good nurseries, simply as CROTON, ignoring fun names like Sloppy Painter and Pie Crust and Curly Boy. That is a pet peeve of mine, and I will rarely buy one that isn't named.
I always thought crotons were fairly bullet-proof, but that is not necessarily true. They are susceptible to sustained cold spells, which cause leaf drop, and can be afflicted by both mealy bugs and scale. Scale is the hardest to fight, and it frequently occurs after a plant has been weakened by cold weather. Although horticultural sprays are a good first line of defense, scale is tough to kill because it has hard shells, and frequently requires a systemic insecticide like Bayers.
Magnificent, Red Batik and Sunny Stars.
Most crotons like sun, but don't necessarily love full sun in the hottest part of the day, so bright filtered light is considered a better location. A few actually prefer shade. A lot don't seem to care. Colors will vary, though, depending on how much sun/shade they do get.
After Mark Peters, owner of Peters Croton Nursery, came to speak at the Parkland Garden Club, I learned that my crotons have been very forgiving of what can only be described as unintentional neglect.
I do try to fertilize my palms, my fruit trees and some of my flowering trees three times a year, but often only manage two. I rarely pay much attention to my crotons, aside from maybe a handful of palm fertilizer cast in their direction when I have some left over. To me, the tag "care-free" truly means free of care.
But according to Peters, crotons cannot thrive without fertilizer, perferably palm fertilize with its abundance of micronutrients. He suggests young plants in the ground should get a quarter cup of palm fertilizer two or three times during the spring and summer, and established plants 1/2 to one cup. Opps.
He also suggested that pruning is mandatory, something I only do when scale is out of control or I want clippings for propagation. He said it creates strong stems and encourages branching.
They are also relatively easy to propagate, either by cuttings in the spring or air layering.
Although they are considered drought tolerant once established, Peters also recommends a minimum of one-half to one inch of water a week and says an irrigation system is essential. Mine probably do okay there, but I think I need to work a little harder on pampering my care-free crotons.
I am pretty happy with the way most of my crotons are as is, but I figure the payoff from more attention will no doubt be hardier bushes, and even more year-round color.
If you have questions or comments, please email The Plant Lady at
christinewj6380@gmail.com.
