I just purchased a new Jade stands a bout 2' high stem is about 1" dia its in a 12" plastic pot ( 11"deep) and its in beautiful shape should i transplant it in to a shallow terracotta pot or leave it until the spring? i do not want it to rot from excess water i do not know how large the root system is.?
If it is healthy and growing, for now I would leave it alone. Generally, Jades tend to have very small root systems compared to the size of the crown, and the biggest mistake made is overpotting. But there is one thing to check, for sure. How fast does water drain through the pot when you water it ? If it stays wet for a long time after watering, or water takes a long time to drain out, then you may want to repot into a much coarser, faster draining mixture, and of course, you can then put it in a terra cotta pot if you like. The problems with Jades and plastic pots, in my opinion and experience, have a lot more to do with the texture of the soil IN the pot, and how the plant is watered, than it does with the actual plastic. If you tend to overwater, then terra cotta does dry out faster, which helps offset your watering habits, but if you can wait until it's dried out at least the top inch of soil before you water, being in plastic does not doom the plant to rotting roots. If you just want to have the look of a terra cotta pot, you could just use one as an overpot, or cache pot, to hide the plastic one. But unless the soil is staying wet too long, or the plant seems not to be growing, I would be cautious repotting it. If you do, be very gentle, the roots are fine and fibrous. Don't use a bigger pot.. you may find a smaller one will do nicely.. you only want a couple of inches, at most, of fresh soil mix around the root ball.
well i did it because it was staying wet to long i used cactus mix with lots of per-lite and small gravel i put it in a Terra cotta pot the same size as the old one i have not watered it for now and yes the root ball was not very big and loss some roots in the process i hope it recovers from the transplant so far it looks great..........
I wish you luck, sounds like you made the right choice.. make sure it gets plenty of light, direct sun if you have it. They do really well outside in summers.. just make sure to give them a couple of weeks in shade to adapt to sunlight, so the leaves don't get sunburned. Don't do what my sister did to my foot high jade and stick it out on the deck at noon on a hot summer day.. she figured it was a sun lover, so give it some sun. It burned every leaf so badly the plant eventually died.sigh.. such is life.
the lighting is not a problem i have them under flouresent plant lights in a west facing window at this time of the year they get about 3 hours of direct sun when its not cloudy of course and the leaves at the top of the plants are purple tinged so that's an indication of plenty of light if i understand correctly?
Pea gravel has much larger pieces, and does not do quite as good a job as something a bit finer, but one thing it is great for is adding weight to pots for top heavy plants like jades... helps keep them from tipping over. I have used it in big planters as part of a mix, but a finer gravel or coarse sand is better. Check local sources for concrete mixing sand... if it has lots of varying particle sizes, up to quarter inch or more pebbles and chips, and feels very harsh in your hand, like coarse sandpaper, that is really good for succulent mixes. Just avoid anything labeled as Play Sand, or for sand boxes, or for under paving stones, those are too fine and pack down like rock, which is exactly the opposite of what you want. Home Depot here in Mississauga sell a very good concrete sand, and I can get it from some stone suppliers too. Sixty odd pound bag is about $4.,.. it's heavy, yes, but in size not as big as a medium bag of potting mix. Hard to find sand in smaller amounts, at least here anyway.
Reno depot had no coarse sand but did have what they call 1/4" gravel made up of small rocks no bigger then 1/4" all little pebbles how much of this should i add to an 8" terra cotta pot.
I usually mix up my own recipe, more or less.. but generally, I'd put no more than a third of the total as coarse materials. In fact, now I think of it, more like a quarter. It depends to some extent on what I'm mixing it into. Things like the larger bits of perlite and your 1/4 inch gravel would fall in the coarse category. For that 8 inch pot, I'd guess not more than a couple of good handsful, mixed well into whatever else you've got. Easy test is to mix some up, firm it into a four inch pot the same as you would to plant something in it and water it, see how quick it runs out. If it runs out like the dam burst, too much gravel, if it just trickles, not enough, and you want to be somewhere in the middle of that. Sorry it's not more exact, but as I say, typically I mix up a 5 gallon bucketful at a time.. I don't really measure any more, I know more or less when it's right. Most of the time I use approximately two parts of general potting mix or coir, one or two parts of sand, and one part of perlite or coarse gravel like yours. If I know the plant is super sensitive to too much water, I'll up the sand another part and maybe a half part more sand. I use whatever is handy to measure.. a yogurt tub or the trowel, whatever is to hand.You can find dozens, if not hundreds, of recipes for various mixes on line, everyone has their preference, but this has worked pretty well for me. If the plant is really top heavy, sometimes I'll add a handful or so of plain gravel, this is what I often use pea gravel for, in the bottom of the pot, for weight and balance, but it's not part of the mix. Just a weight. You can do the same with some pebbles in the bottom too.
hey, just a thought about growing jade trees. in the 20 years or so i have been growing jades, i have found they do much better, if you bottom water them. I am not sure why, but whenever I had watered them from the top, their growth slowed almost to a stop, and some have even rotted and died. good luck with your new plant. whenever I purchase a new plant, i always transplant them into clean pots, of new soil that has been baked for 4 hrs at 450 degrees to kill any unwanted guests and bacteria. wash the roots clean of any soil, and sit them in a anti fungal wash just before planting. peace.
thanks very much for all your tips i did make a mix that seems to drain well so i will see how it does in the next couple of weeks hope the sun shines more then it has the last couple of days i did notice the plant plant now has black patches on some of the leaves i understand from research this is from re potting possible root damage have you ever had this problem?
Happy to help ! Light in winter is always an issue.. which is why I built a small light garden, but I'm also lucky to have a southwest exposure, so most of the light lovers manage in winter, though growth often slows or stops for a few months. Of course, I cook in the heat all summer, but you can't have everything, right ? :-). I don't recall ever seeing black patches on any of my jades. Where did you read it could be repotting damage ? I've never heard that before. Typically, black spots on most plants are more likely to be fungal in origin, or sometimes healed scars from some sort of physical damage. Don't think I have ever seen any on a jade myself, that I can recall. I have a tendency to underwater most of my plants, so I usually see bottom leaves shrivel and fall off. So long as it doesn't get too dry for too long it's not a big deal. If it were mine, unless it would greatly disfigure the plant, I'd remove any leaves with black on them, if only to prevent the spread of any possible infection. If you want, you could try spraying the damaged leaves with a mix of one teaspoon of baking soda to one quart water.. this is a good all purpose fungicide that will knock down many common fungi, but not all of them.. and won't do any harm to anything, whether it works or not. But it won't remove the spots. If you notice the spots are spreading, definitely get rid of affected leaves. I've read in a couple of places that black spots can be associated with overwatering, so it may be simply the result of the way the plant was potted before, and hopefully won't spread to any more leaves now you've got the soil draining better.
i read this from a site i forget wich one the person name is Will Creed he claims to be an expert on jades in any case i did remove the infected leaves and will see if more turn i hope not i am moving in July of this year to a better location and will have big patio doors and yes the ultimate .... a southern exposure hooray............i should not have a light problem nex winter so in any case thanks for all your help i will post a picture of the jade in question in a few months and will show you its progress its always gratifying to see the result of your help...........
That would be great.. and congrats on the move. Don't forget, you can't put any plant into direct sun after it's been indoors for any length of time, even in a greenhouse. The reason is interesting, at least to me. In darker conditions, which is indoor light no matter what exposure you have, the light receiving cells on the leaves of plants arrange themselves so the largest possible area is facing the light.. basically on their backsides. In sunlight outside, they do the opposite, and arrange themselves on their sides, with the smallest area exposed to the light. It takes about two weeks for most plants to make the change in cell arrangement, so you need to put them somewhere shady for the first week and partial shade the second week, to avoid sunburning the plant, which, as I know to my sorrow, can be fatal. You know, I'd give a lot to be able to move to a larger place myself, or at least a spot with more windows! I've got so many plants crammed into the space I do have, I don't need curtains !
I looked up Will Creed, and he sure sounds like someone who would know a lot, and he's probably seen a lot more Jades in adverse conditions than I have. I've only grown maybe a dozen Jades along the way. Currently I don't have any at all, because I ran out of room and had to sell my big one. I do have dozens of other succulents, my light garden is pretty crowded now. I'm quite fond of the crassula group in general though. I've made plenty of mistakes in culture along the way, some of them are extremely picky about water, much less forgiving than Jade plants usually are. One reason I'd like a bigger place one day, so there would be room for larger specimens. I have a fairly large Cereus cactus I shall soon have to rehome too, it's become too big and is so heavy I can just barely lift it in the pot.. as it is I barely water it, because it helps slow it's growth. sigh...what can you do ? I've had it for over 25 years, and I'll miss it when it goes. Enjoy your Jade !
by the time i move they will be acclimated what part of Mississauga you live my was living just of Winston Churhill near the 407......
Hey, I used to live not far from there myself, behind the mall there. My old bf and I had an apartment for a year, on Battleford. Now I'm near the Dixie/Dundas area.
It's a small world. Now you're in Montreal, and as it happens that is where I was born.. though my parents moved before I was a year old, so I have no memories of it.
