Melissa, your location is about 3 hours to my north, so we have similar hot and dry inland location. Jades slow down in growth during summer, it waits to perk up again, once we come into cooler Fall conditions. I water my jades once a week, it is just too dry anyways, our humidity is too low, so very fast dry out time. But it fattens its stems at this time, it efficiently stores the moisture there and in its leaves.
Your plant was going droppy, since it wanted more light.
If that were my plant, I would have slowly acclimated it to outdoors in Spring, so by summer it is already accustomed to outside conditions. Active gas exchange with succulents happens at night when its stomates are open, so it will enjoy being outdoors.
My jades stay outdoors year round, and they can take the summer conditions and our mild winters nicely. I think since we still manage to get a nice cool down at night, it ably handles the super dry and hot daytime especially when heat wave occurs. But I do make sure to water them thoroughly when heat wave is being forecast for that week.
@msandsm. In my experience, you can cut them pretty much any way you want. If you simply want to shape this leggy one, take off the ends of the branches where you want that final shape to be. That could be 1/3, 1/2, or even 2/3 of the lengths. You can plant those cuttings and most of them will root. In my opinion I think you have those leggy, drooping branches because of lack of light. Jade do best in very strong, though indirect light. They can be acclimated to sun, but if you rush it, the leaves will sunburn. Early morning or very late afternoon sun is great though. When the leaves of mine get reddish along the leaf-borders, I know it is getting just the right amount of sun and bright light.
