Croton dying! Spider mites?

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kcblack Flagstaff, AZ Aug 01, 2008

I bought a huge croton about 2 months ago. I thought I had figured out the light and watering it needed but it is failing. I found spider mites yesterday, I don't know if this is causing my plant's demise and I don't know how to get rid of them.. Do I just spray the plant with water? The plants leaves are getting kind of soft usually at he ends but somtimes in the middle then very quickly drying up. I pulled about 10 or so leaves off the plant in one setting. Does this sound like spider mitesor a combination of them and not taking care of the plant properly? I am not sure it will recover. Help!

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ecrane3 Dublin, CA(Zone 9a) Aug 01, 2008

Can you post a picture? I'm not convinced that SM's are your only problem. The part about the leaves getting soft makes me suspect there may be a watering issue involved as well.

I also wonder if you really have SM's...they are very tiny and hard to see even on a normal plant, and with the colorful leaves on a croton I think you'd have to look really hard to be able to spot them, most likely not something you would just find unless you were looking for them. I always find them by seeing the symptoms first, then I go and look for the mites and find them, but you'd never notice the mites unless you were purposely looking for them so if you actually saw insects of some sort on your plant without going hunting for them then I doubt they're spider mites. The usual symptoms of spider mites are a stippled yellow pattern on the leaves from them sucking on them (not sure what this would look like on a croton though) and then eventually the leaves will dry up and die, but they wouldn't go through that soft phase first. Then on the undersides of the leaves you'll find little teeny tiny brownish red dots, so small that you can barely see them. If the infestation is bad, you may also see some webbing underneath the leaves.

For the spider mites, the key thing to know is that they only live on the undersides of the leaves so whatever you do, you have to get the undersides of the leaves or else you won't get rid of them. My first step is always to take the plant outside and hose off the undersides of the leaves really well. Then if it was a bad infestation once the plant dries you could use a spray too (make sure you check the label to see if it lists spider mites) and apply that to the undersides of the leaves. Whatever you do, you'll need to repeat it a few times over the next couple weeks because you never get absolutely all of them on the first try.

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