Avatar for BlazeBias
Nov 19, 2016 1:07 PM CST
Thread OP
SouthWest Michigan (Zone 6a)
So, a few weeks ago, I was driving on the back country roads of my area and passed a cart with some seasonal squash for sale. Loving the back road deals, I quickly made a u-turn and pulled onto this kindly old mans front lawn, but what immediately took my attention was this very large beautiful jade tree sitting in a box marked Free! The story of this plant is only known as far back as me doing a jig as I put it in my car. Some of the leaves have spots and for the first week after getting it home, it had yellow leaves falling off of it... It's seems to have calmed down since then and started some new growth. My question to all you fine people is this: given what you can see of it, is it in good shape, is there any trimming, repotting, more/less watering I should be doing? I know next to nothing about these succulents other than gritty well draining soil, next to nothing in water otherwise and a fair amount of filtered light, and even then there are a lot of conflicting views. I'm adding some images, please let me know if there are anymore views you would like captured and I will see what I can do to get a proper picture for you.
As a side note: the window with the black curtain is a north facing window and the light source is a west facing window.
Thanks in advance for anything you can tell me to insure success with this beauty Smiling
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Nov 19, 2016 2:34 PM CST
Name: Baja
Baja California (Zone 11b)
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Water well (until drips come out the bottom of the pot) and then wait to water again until the soil goes almost dry at depth. There is no advantage to allowing the plant to sit around for any extended period bone dry... so there's a happy medium. You can get a sense of when the soil is drying out by sticking your finger (or a chopstick or a moisture meter) in there to tell. The top layer will dry out very fast and not be informative about what's happening underneath. The interval between watering might be a week or two in good strong light.

You cannot provide too much light for this plant indoors. An unobstructed south-facing window would be great this time of year. What tends to happen in low light (and this is the season of low light in Michigan) is the plant grows long and weak and eventually the branches fall over and have to be pruned. So give it all the light you can.

Wait and watch for a while before you entertain the idea of repotting the plant (something you probably would want to do in the spring anyway) or pruning it. The pruning is something you can do any number of different ways, depending on your objective, and the plant will almost always come out fine. Usually you might prune to correct weak sideways growth or top-heavy growth. When one of these is outside in full sun (they can take all-day sun in mild climates, given a gradual stepwise adjustment), it will develop an attractive reddish tinge to the edges of the leaves, and never need pruning.
Avatar for BlazeBias
Nov 19, 2016 7:25 PM CST
Thread OP
SouthWest Michigan (Zone 6a)
Thank you very much for your very informative reply, Baja_Costero! I feel more confident now Hurray!
Avatar for Deebie
Nov 24, 2016 12:45 PM CST
Name: Deborah
midstate South Carolina (Zone 8a)
Don't Sweat the Small Stuff!
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BTW, Nice Catch and Welcome! to NGA. Happy growing!
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