My new friend has a gigantic jade plant. It was pruned last year and a short stump was left very near to the trunk of the plant. I stuck my finger into the cut place and discovered rot. I have no doubt this plant will die without some action being taken toward saving it.

My initial thought was to clean out the rot and replace it with some variety of concrete product. I would be very thankful for help. What would you all do to try to save this plant??

steve

skrongaman! Wait for more responses before you accept my recommendation as I'm a newbie gardener. What about cleaning out the rot and putting in Comet? What do others think??

I would put a dab of cinnamon on that exposed stump, keep it dry and it should heal. Give it time.

Concrete! Involves a chemical reaction that would further damage the plant. Comet! - the kind I scour my sink with?

How deep does the rot go? Cut the rotting branch back with a clean sharp knife - cut off a little at a time until you find tissue that is green (no brown). You will have to sterilize the knife after every cut with alcohol or you will transfer the rot to newly cut parts. Keep cutting until you find healthy green tissue. If you cut all the way back to the trunk and are still seeing brown, the roots are involved and you will be saving pieces of the plant.

PS:

DaisyI said:Comet! - the kind I scour my sink with?
PS:

My first reaction when I saw the word Comet was that it might have been an 'autocorrect' for the word concrete, but I did some very quick research and found that some people actually do use Comet (or something similar) for rot. Here is what I found:
http://www.dvis-ais.org/iris-r...

( I still agree with @Daisyl to use a sterilized knife to cut away the rot but thought others might want to chime in about this Comet idea. )

Weird!

Yeah, it was on iris rot that I used the kitchen Comet, and yeah, it worked on iris. I have zero idea about jade!