Coleus given to me by the neighbor at 30 inches tall!!!! Picture taken on 12-18-0
These pictures are of the HUGE Coleus the neighbor gave me. Kyle told me that she had Coleus of a different color… Well, I had already noticed them as I would walk or drive by, but he suggested that we go up and see if we could get cuttings. SO, I decided I would take a pot with three of mine to her and see if she would return the gesture with a few cuttings… I didn’t realize that she was going to go out to her bed and yank up two entire plants!!! So, we came back to the mansion carrying two TREES with us. I went right to the back yard and put them in two of the largest pots I could find. They did not even show any signs of being pulled out of the ground and put in pots!
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW is that some Coleus get quite large! DON’T listen to sales people that know nothing about plants or even believe what you read on the tag! Just look at the Kong Series I have… All of the cuttings I took have grown into smaller ordinary sized plants except for that one! Some commercial growers spray their plants with growth retardants so they will be short and bushy. That way they look like nice tidy plants for the retail market… After a while, especially if you take cuttings, you may be in for a surprise!
February 2, 2010. I HAVE A QUESTION! I made a post a while back about the Cabbage Worms I found on these two plants. Well, I had problems with them for two months and I kept picking them off. I am wondering if they came from the soil or if the plants had eggs on them when I got them from the neighbor. Luckily, and strangely, none of the other plants (not even my other Coleus) had the worms on them. I haven’t asked the neighbor if she had the same problem or not.
That wasn’t the question, though! If anyone reading this page grows Coleus and you over winter them in the house, I have a question that bugs me. Do your Coleus get these string-like webs on them? I have noticed that some of the leaves, usually down toward the base of the plant, will fall off and hang by a very think string… like a web or something? What in the heck is that? In Minnesota I noticed some webs on the Coleus, got the magnyfing glass, and saw these tiny bugs moving up and down the webs. Here, I didn’t see any bugs.
Needless to say, I took a bunch of cuttings from these two Coleus and put them in pots. The two bigger plants are now all but dead!
