A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The House Plant Forum Two plants are close to the end -- what to do for them?

I inherited a houseful of lovely plants from the previous owners of this house. Some of them took hits during the month before we moved in when the house was unoccupied (our realtor watered as much as he could) but I had them mostly back in shape. But then, well, life got busy, and I failed to pay attention, and a couple of them are on the skids.

First, the wonderful jade. Sigh. I moved it into a different room during some Thanksgiving dinner moving of furniture, thinking it would get enough light in there. Not so. After a couple weeks I realized a bunch of its leaves were drooping. I also probably didn't water it enough during that time. So now, it seems to be better back in its old spot, but its lost a bunch of its drooping leaves. One of its stalks is like a big empty tree trunk, though the leaves at the end seems still healthy. There are probably still more leaves to fall, though. Also worrisome, a new branch near the base of that stalk that I'd thought was healthy suddenly just died. So my questions on this one are, what to do? How to help it? Will it grow leaves back at some point, or is that stalk just destined to be bare? Should I do some kind of pruning to that part that's lost so many leaves?

The other plant is one I don't know by name. It's smaller, more delicate, and a much lighter green than the jade, though the thick puffy leaves remind me of the jade. However, the leaves are fuzzy, with little red highlights here and there. This one may not have been getting enough light once winter came around. I noticed it starting to suffer where it was on a bookshelf. The light in the room is still good, but it was probably getting blocked by the books. Anyway, it had three nice stalks, but two of them totally croaked. One is left, and I've been babying it in the window box and under the grow light. The end of the stalk has new growth and seems to be trying to bounce back, but several of the leaves at the base of the stalk died and fell off, as did some new growth near the base of the stalk. One thing I can tell for sure about this plant is that it needs new soil. The soil is so thick that water just sits on top. Unfortunately I tend to just scratch my head about such things until the situation is dire! But I'm wondering, at this point, if it would be possible to make a cutting of the whole branch and then just try to get it restarted that way? What's left is probably the perfect size for a cutting, but might not survive an elaborate operation on the soil. And if a cutting is a good idea, is there a technique to follow? My only experience doing cuttings was in a high school horticulture class, and it was kind of hit and miss. I've only got one shot on this one.

Thanks for reading my tale of woe, and thanks for any thoughts you have!

Hi Phoebekitty and welcome to the forums.

And welcome to your new house - how exciting!

As for the jades... they simply do not like being moved, no matter how healthy they are! They tend to drop leaves when moved even just a few feet from where they've been growing, but usually adjust and put new ones out.

If the trunks are in trouble, or very long and bare, you can take cuttings. It's pretty simple to do. Take pieces that are about 3-4 inches long and let the cut end DRY OUT for a day or two. This ensures that the end scars over and the cutting doesn't get soggy. Then you can just pot up the cuttings in new soil. If the remaining trunks are healthy, it might take a while, but you will definitely see new shoots coming out of the spots where the old leaves fell off.

I know... I have done this - had a very large and beautiful jade that got mealy bugs on it and I had to cut it waaaaaaaaaay down. It also lost NUMEROUS leaves when I sprayed it with too much soapy water.

Somewhere here is a whole post about it, or that might be in the old forums. If you do a search here about jades, it might come up. I'll try to search later when I get back home.

Wow, thanks! Really helpful!