Hi, I'm new to this forum, I discovered it while searching for online help on crotons and it seems very friendly so I decided to join. Please excuse any English mistakes I may do, my natural language is french.
I have a lot of problem with the croton I bought 2 months ago. It's my first plant and it doesn't look very healthy but I don't know what I'm doing wrong. Here's a list of my worries:

- Ever since I got it it hasn't grown a single leaf. When we bought it there was a small leaf and a bud at the end of the stem. I was in a hustle for both of them to grow but they didn't change at all as you can see in the picture.



- We can see the roots that are coming out of the ground. They come out on the top of the ground but not on the bottom of the pot. I wondered if I should repot but then I read that crotons liked to be tight in their pot and since mine is so small I left it in its original pot.


- The leaves are becoming red, I know this is normal for crotons when they get sun and we give it plenty of sun because we often move it during the day so that it can follow the daylight but I'm worried that it may be getting too much and that could be the cause for its unhealthy look.

- There is this leaf that was looking great for the first 2 months but that suddenly got all white and ugly, I think it may be near of falling off. On the same picture, you can also see that my plant produces a lot of that withe latex.. That didn't worry me beacuse I read that it was normal.. but should I be worried? Is it producing too much latex?


- I never placed my plant inside a new pot I only placed the original plastic pot inside of the one in ceramic. Should I have repot it completely inside the orange pot??

- We have had spider mites, the day after we got it there was some kind of spider web on it and when we would shake the plant over a white sheet we could clearly see things moving. We started to mist the plant twice a day and moved it to a more humid room we never saw any spider web anymore. We even left the plant without any mist for a few days and no more web appeared, so we figured out the mites were gone.

- I'm not sure how often I should water the plant. We wait for the soil to be dry before we water it. This usually happens every week. But I don't know how I can be sure that not only the top that is exposed to the air is dry, the bottom is too. I fear that I may have not watered it enough because I wait too much between watering...

- The leaves have gradually become folded like they were too dry.. and the edges are brown and hard. you can see how folded they are on the picture where I showed the white ugly leaf.

- The plant seems to bend on its side if you look at that picture it really looks like it's about to fall off the pot! I don't know what's causing this but we tried to put the plant other side facing the sun for a couple of days so that it would shift to a more normal posture but it didn't work, my plant doesn't move ...



I'm very afraid that my plant will die, I've come to love it so much! We mist it twice a day at regular hours, check the dryness of the soil everyday, we give it plenty of sun and a lot of love we keep the temperature of the room at 22°C and the atmosphere is quite humid. We haven't used any fertilizer because were in winter. I don't know what I could be doing more, but I really care for this plant!

Please tell me what I do wrong!!

Note: if you can't see the pictures here's the yahoo picture link.
http://pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/alizarine101/detail?.dir=/7917&.dnm=698a.jpg&.src=ph

Thank you

i have a croton ......
being your from CT......Yours may do what mine does......Seems to quit growing in the winter.. It got to be 4 ft tall and all the leaves come to the top only..........

Dont think I gave it extra attention.

dodge

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