From my garden

annafl

annafl

Esteemed Member
2,243
24/02/13
567
153
Sarasota, FL zone 9b/10a United States
Just wanted to post a few from my garden I thought were good enough for the wiki. I hope that's ok. A couple are from last year. In order: Salmon- does anyone know the origin of this one? It is so incredibly slow. I know Chris Mayhew grew/had some of these, but don't know anything else about this croton. Looked better at one point, but I insist on moving it around, and each time it fries. Very finicky croton that will probably never make it in the ground. Pitcarin- on the slow side for me, but I find it so pretty! Compte de Castelaine- What a beautifully patterned croton. Her Highness- from last year. It puts out so many flowers, it wastes so much energy on this and has not looked as good as last year.
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Compte de Castelaine-Ana.jpg
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Great pictures! You should never hesitate to include your own photos in the wiki, you have the most spectacular gardens. I have Salmon on my wish list but have never seen it available. I wonder if it would put on more growth if it were planted in your gardens. I guess the hard part is finding the right spot. I always put the plants right in the garden when I get them and keep my fingers crossed. Definitely need to do some moving of plants to bring out the best in them, but lately I have been too busy putting in new plants and digging new gardens. Aside from taking photos, this week has been all about doing sorting and purging in my classroom to make room for everything and get ready for the new school year which is about a month away.
Keep posting photos from your gardens please! Seeing everyones garden photos is what helps motivate me to keep looking for new crotons. I had not really paid attention to Her Highness until the recent post. It is a beautiful plant and your clone is especially nice. I probably could not tell the difference between it and Lady Claire (I believe Phil and Jeff had said Lady Claire is more yellow). Need to add it to my wishlist.
 
Anna, Your 'Her Highness' looks great! My plant also flowers constantly wasting energy. My new trick is removing flower stem as soon as notice them, hoping that will help on growth.
 
VeroKarl said:
Great pictures! You should never hesitate to include your own photos in the wiki, you have the most spectacular gardens. I have Salmon on my wish list but have never seen it available. I wonder if it would put on more growth if it were planted in your gardens. I guess the hard part is finding the right spot. I always put the plants right in the garden when I get them and keep my fingers crossed. Definitely need to do some moving of plants to bring out the best in them, but lately I have been too busy putting in new plants and digging new gardens. Aside from taking photos, this week has been all about doing sorting and purging in my classroom to make room for everything and get ready for the new school year which is about a month away.
Keep posting photos from your gardens please! Seeing everyones garden photos is what helps motivate me to keep looking for new crotons. I had not really paid attention to Her Highness until the recent post. It is a beautiful plant and your clone is especially nice. I probably could not tell the difference between it and Lady Claire (I believe Phil and Jeff had said Lady Claire is more yellow). Need to add it to my wishlist.
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Thanks, Karl. I found this Salmon at Keith's a few years ago. Since then, I've almost killed it a few times, so it doesn't seem to get ahead. Maybe I should plant it, but it always seems so small and fragile to me. Yes, I'm sure this is a super busy time for all teachers, getting ready for the new year. Her Highness looked better last year because the drought this year set it back. With the recent rains, it's getting going now, I think, as are all my plants. I've never seen Lady Claire in person. Unfortunately I don't get to South Florida and gardens down there often enough to get to know more plants. I wish I could.

ScotTi said:
Anna, Your 'Her Highness' looks great! My plant also flowers constantly wasting energy. My new trick is removing flower stem as soon as notice them, hoping that will help on growth.
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Thanks, Scott, I try to remove flowers as soon as I see them on all my crotons unless I'm planning on hybridizing with them. It's hard to know if it has been helping, though. I think all my crotons freaked with the drought. They got stressed and started flowering like crazy. Maybe they are slowing down now, I hope.
 
annafl said:
Thanks, Karl. I found this Salmon at Keith's a few years ago. Since then, I've almost killed it a few times, so it doesn't seem to get ahead. Maybe I should plant it, but it always seems so small and fragile to me. Yes, I'm sure this is a super busy time for all teachers, getting ready for the new year. Her Highness looked better last year because the drought this year set it back. With the recent rains, it's getting going now, I think, as are all my plants. I've never seen Lady Claire in person. Unfortunately I don't get to South Florida and gardens down there often enough to get to know more plants. I wish I could.



Thanks, Scott, I try to remove flowers as soon as I see them on all my crotons unless I'm planning on hybridizing with them. It's hard to know if it has been helping, though. I think all my crotons freaked with the drought. They got stressed and started flowering like crazy. Maybe they are slowing down now, I hope.
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Lady Claire is much yellower than Her Highness and the leaves are a lot larger ...If i can ever post again ill show the difference...
 
Ana, you are such a great asset to the croton society! Your dedication to crotons, wiki and forum is amazing. It takes so much of your time.
I was very busy lately and I finally finished my landscaping. Unfortunately, I lost track of some crotons in the process. Now I am trying to get my inventory straight.
Can I post a few pictures from my garden in this thread?

.
 
Thank you, Ana. I am currently comparing my findings with the pictures in the wiki. I will probably need my own thread since I have many strange crotons and NOIDs. I will post here the ones that are not much in the wiki. Sadie and Caution Light both have only one picture and I got them from those people: Sadie from Jeff and Caution Light (I hope it is the right one) from Lamar. (I do not pretend to appear in the wiki, and I have a date mark on all my pictures. Time is flying so fast that I need tracking :)
 

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I also need more information on "Son of Joe Friday": it is not in the wiki.
And my Florida Sunset looks different from the wiki

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Anna, your pictures look great! I got my Salmon from Chris and I believe he told me that it was a seedling he found growing at the old Davis estate property, and he named it. I find it terribly slow and a poor grower. Mine is, yours looks much better.

Pix.....Son of Joe Friday is a seedling that a gentleman named David Chung who lived in Hollywood named. It was a seedling from Joe Friday. I haven't spoke to him in 4 or 5 years now.
 
Hi Pix,
Nice crotons! I am not an expert, but as far as I can tell, Caution Light and Florida Sunset, seem correctly named. I've never seen Son of Joe Friday or Sadie in person, so I'm not sure about those, but Sadie seems to be the same as the one in the wiki. The reason so many current crotons aren't in the wiki is because there is so little posting of photos of croton IDs that are corroborated or confirmed by members. To keep our wiki an accurate source, a plant that's unfamiliar to me has to be confirmed by others, and there is little commenting on our forum to have this happen. Like you, I am far away from South Florida where there is access to more collector's gardens where I can learn about other cultivars and new cultivars. I learn a little from our events, but not enough. This forum is the best way, but there is not a lot of action/posting and commenting here as there once was. Ron Kiefert really kept this forum going in the past and I learned a lot at that time, and sometimes people would comment to corroborate things or he would post from others' gardens, but now that he's gone, the wiki has become stagnant because of my stagnant knowledge and resources. I really wish there was more commenting/posting. It would be fun and stimulating for everyone, and we could all learn from it.

Jeff, thanks for that bit of information about Son of Joe Friday.
 
Jeff and Ana, thank you so much for your responses!
I believe there should be certain amount of clones in the circulation to make it to the wiki. It takes time.
Ana, you are doing great! Gardening is so time consuming that I am surprised these people are posting at all! I see that a lot is going on right now: people are selling their houses and moving out of their gardens...Life is getting on the way. You are here in right time!
 
Hi Anna… I thoroughly enjoy all of your fotos, please keep posting. In my opinion you certainly have improved your gardening and photography skills by leaps and bounds! Keep up your excellent work as well as the encouragement and enthusiasm you instill in everyone that follows this web site. :)
 
I will post if i can ever figure this out ... im no expert at computors but love my plants eventually ill figure it out..I am totaly confused as to why none of the old methods work. I can click and drag but cant figure were to put them ??????...im deff a gray hair....
 
David, it is so sad what you are saying :(
I read that people are having troubles with posting pictures and some testing is going on. I haven't been here for half of year, but I do not see any difference. Everything looks the same to me.
But I will try to drag and post.

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Ok, it worked. Exept that my picture is still not vertical. This is my problem.

...so, David, you have to drag and drop your picture in your post. I did that from desktop. But before that you have to make the forum screen smaller by dragging from one side, so you can see part of desktop with your picture. Does it make sense to you?
There is , probably, a smarter way, but I am not that smart :)
 
Hi Ana,
Gorgeous pictures. The Wood's Blue Goddess is exquisite!

We're still cleaning up. After six weeks it's gotten to be a pain. The crotons love the new amount of sun but the aroids fried before we could get them cover. Hopefully there's enough life left in them to regrow. I can't wait to get back to the routine of propagating and growing.
 
annafl said:
A spot in our garden with an unlikely combination of crotons. I love this colorful and diverse area. Potter's pink, General MacArthur, Limelight and Yellow Petra.

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Wow Ana,

Your gardens look gorgeous. Mine are still recovering and I have plenty of cleaning up before I am going to have pictures looking like these. We just kept getting rain, so some of the crotons that were already stressed from Irma and remained sitting in saturated soils look like they are not going to make it. Finding more plants each day that are on the decline after all that rain. Luckily everything on higher ground is really coming along. So happy to see your gardens looking so spectacular in the short period of time since Irma.
 
annafl said:
A couple of photos in an attempt to wake you guys up a bit. Helen Rutherford is getting tall! Maybe 6-7 feet tall right now and I'm letting her go to see what happens. This is one of my favorites. Always colorful and healthy. Withstood Irma's strongest winds here, unbelievably!


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Is that the plant you purchased as "Ellen Rutherford". I got one also, I believe from one of Jeff's sales. Gorgeous!
 
Marie Nock said:
Hi Ana,
Gorgeous pictures. The Wood's Blue Goddess is exquisite!
We're still cleaning up. After six weeks it's gotten to be a pain. The crotons love the new amount of sun but the aroids fried before we could get them cover. Hopefully there's enough life left in them to regrow. I can't wait to get back to the routine of propagating and growing.
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VeroKarl said:
Wow Ana,
Your gardens look gorgeous. Mine are still recovering and I have plenty of cleaning up before I am going to have pictures looking like these. We just kept getting rain, so some of the crotons that were already stressed from Irma and remained sitting in saturated soils look like they are not going to make it. Finding more plants each day that are on the decline after all that rain. Luckily everything on higher ground is really coming along. So happy to see your gardens looking so spectacular in the short period of time since Irma.
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Marie and Karl, we are still finding oak branches here and there after all these weeks of cleaning up. Our garden looks spent with several trees that had to be righted, many things defoliated (including lots of leaf drop in crotons again, after they were finally recovering from last year's drought). We had gotten 21 inches of rain before Irma and 5 more with Irma, so some crotons and other plants suffered root death because of wet feet. The areas I've shown are just the few that are on the path to recovery. Marie, the Wood's Blue Goddess is a waterlily I traded for with a friend in South Florida. He mailed them to me about 11-12 years ago and we've managed to continue rejuvenating them. We love them and they bloom almost every day of the year! Yes, I know we will all be glad to have our gardens back to normal. Now, if only we could get a couple of truckload of mulch, it would help!


palmisland said:
Is that the plant you purchased as "Ellen Rutherford". I got one also, I believe from one of Jeff's sales. Gorgeous!
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Thanks, Randy! I actually purchased this maybe 6 years ago as Gloriosa, but not from Jeff. It was an unknown for years that I asked about on this forum and you clinched for me. I made the mistake of calling it Ellen Rutherford after that by mistake. It has been one of my favorites from the start and I'm just letting it go to see how big/wide it gets. I hope to make a nice clump of it someday.
 
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