Hey there! My jade plant was looking quite leggy and sad (leaning a lot to the right) so I got a sun lamp to improve his state. I know that jades get these lovely red edges when they’re happy and I’m seeing some show up in the top leaves, will the other leaves get this too or no? Are there any other things I should change? Thanks!
I don’t really know jade plants well but maybe a support pole might be the only thing it really needs until it fills out and gets more strength to stand up on its own?
0 likes He isn’t leaning so much any more,(see; first picture) but still looking leggy. Any tips?
0 likes Not really, like I said not really a plant I specialize in, maybe try different fertilizer methods and a timer for certain times of the day for the light to turn on / off to help produce more leafs. You could always propagate as well and basically get about 6 or more plants out of that one and start at ground zero.
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Big jade plant fan here 👋 aside from giving it as much light as you can and/or pruning it where it’s leggy or propagating it to make it a bit bushier, there’s not much you can do. It looks like it’s doing just fine. I personally have found they like a good south window’s windowsill, but if you need the grow light to suffice in your home, that’ll work just fine for the jade. If you want it to look less bushy without propogating or anything, you can group a few small jades together in the same pot so they can fill out together, giving them a bushier look. I’ve got two examples I can attach for reference; the first is stem cuttings from my 30 year old jade plant, which I grouped in one pot so they can grow together, and the second is a larger jade plant I bought at a local nursery that came as a group of jades that were grown together for some time, giving the look of more of a “Jade bush”. As for preventing the stretching or leaning, I rotate my jades a bit to a new direction every time I put it back in its spot after watering so all the sides get more even amounts of sunlight. As for the reddening, it’s up to your jade for that. Some never turn red, even when they love their spot, and some only turn red on the new foliage, since that’s where the energy is going towards. Others are variegations that are bred to have a specific color that they turn, like “sunset crassula ovata” or “Crosby’s Compact” varieties. Hope this helps!
1 like Here’s my stem cuttings. You can see a little bit of redness on the top leaves of some of them.
And here’s my larger jade plant. As I noted earlier, it’s actually a bunch of separate jades that were placed together when they were young. This one’s a Crassula Ovata Sunset, specifically, so it’s common for the edges of the leaves to turn red. If any side got too tall at some point, or started getting too big for the pot, I could simply prune it back and propogate the stem cuttings with my first pot of cuttings, eventually turning the first pot into something like the second pot after a few years.
