A Gardeners Forum Forums Gardening Reference Gardening in 2004 Baked Jade

Man oh man.
I'm in the process of moving from my old apartment to a new one (no, still haven't bought a house yet). Old apartment had south facing windows, and a tiny tiny back yard, so it had a bit of potential for plant growing at least. New place has East and west facing windows only, no yard whatsoever (second floor).

Well I have a gardener friend who also happens to be a co-worker and she agreed to plant-sit for me until I get a house. I'm taking the plans to work with me one by one, but the first victim was a smaller jade plant that I had made a year ago from my big jade. I foolishly decided to leave it in my car (with the windows cracked) for 6 hours while I was inside working.

The end result was the saddest Jade (or any other plant for that matter) I have ever seen. Drooping brown leaves, saggy branches, very shriveled. Friend is trying to rescue it but I'm not very hopeful. What do you think its chances of survival are?

Don't worry, I've learned my lesson, the rest of my plants are coming to work with me -- INSIDE. I may get some strange looks but at least my plants will live.

>.o ouchies.
I'm guessing it has 10 leaves, and 9 are in the ground right now. You say its all brown? >.< I think its dead... If it has any green spots on it, you can try propegating from that.

~Phoebe

Jade's are VERY resilient. You might just be surprised by it. If the stem near the base of the plant puckered up a bit for you after a nice watering, it should be fine.

Jade can survive 120 degree heat (my back yard in the sun) in pots. I've neglected mine for years and it's doing quite well.

No one can reliably predict whether your Jade will recover. All you can do is to prune off all damaged plant tissue, give the soil a good soak in plain water, move it to a sunny windowsill, and watch for signs of new growth. Do NOT repot or fertilize. If there is no new growth in a month, then toss it.

Well my friend has the jade now, so we will see how it does. It did have some green left in it even after all that baking.
I'll try to get an update from her tomorrow on the status of my jade.
Not too worried though. Momma jade is HUGE and thriving. I just took two more cuttings from her to make more smaller jade plants, and two of the leaves she dropped a while ago are turning into jade plants too.
For now I've got her in the east facing window and I'll keep her there unless she starts to show signs of not liking the reduced light.

I've been trying to figure out how to get leaves to make babies for a long time! I have a wonderful jade tree that one of my cats recently knocked several large leaves off. I let them harden off, and then placed them on top of soil in small pots. They all shriveled up, turned brown, and died! What am I doing wrong?

I'm not sure why sometimes leaves turn into plants and other times they don't. I imagine it has something to do with the conditions. Was the soil moist at all when you put the leaves on them?

I find that if you actually stick the leaf in the soil, so that it's standing up, it'll more likely put down roots. But it will also grow slower. For example, I have a leaf that I planted a few months ago. It's got roots but it's still just a leaf on the surface. The leaves that are turning into plants on their own have been sitting on the soil for far less time and they are actually producing very tiny leaves already.

I guess its a kinda "maybe maybe not" kinda thing with the leaves. My friend's jade that i'm taking care of dropped a leaf, and its already got a lil one sticking out of it. I was gonna throw it out, but it started growin, so i was like "yay!" and i kept it. I think they have a better chance of turning into new jades if they're near the base of other jades, or the parent jade. ^.^ we'll see.

~Phoebe

I love jade plants. They are so hard for me to kill. I had one outside last year and it got preety frost bitten. I cut off all the mushy stems and brought it inside. If I forget to water it, it does okay. When I notice that the leaves are kinda shrivled then I water it. It is huge! I am always putting the leaves into pots-bottomside first and I have lots of baby jades. They are a very forgiving plant.

i had a baked jade, and a drowned jade, and one that was left in the garage in a box for 6 months. all ended up surviving. right now, i have one that was baked, then drowned, and now is getting pretty. so go figure

I was treating my jade for fungus gnats by putting sand over the top of the soil. When i was spreading the sand with my finger, i accidently knocked off 2 leaves >.O Never lost any leaves from it before, so that kinda sucked for me. they both started growing a new jade though, so that's cool