Sir Andrew! ;-) Welcome back!

I'd recommend that you make your mix 80 - 90 percent Perlite, and the rest potting soil.
Jades like drainage, and good gritty soil. Make sure to rinse the dust out of your Perlite, too.

Do you have any other ingredients?

Josh

I've used for over 40 years damp vermiculite and I mean just damp. Jades as well as cactus will grow roots just lying on top of the medium. In fact all my cactus are left lying on top of the soil until they show roots and jades will do the same.

Hey josh, no I only have only perlite and soil.

Ron, I'm too nervous to just leave it lying there. I think I'll try that when I have a sustainable population of jade to experiment with.

Pics:

Here is one of the soil, Josh, I am really running low on perlite, so i made due with a little more than half of it.

Here is the cutting. The stomata (white circles on leaves, that's what they're called right?) are pretty visable, that's not a bad thing is it? Right next to it is a rooted rosemary cutting.

And another:

Here are two pics of my only other succulent. This aloe is in bad need of a repot! I rescued this from my plant murdering grandmother.

Andrew

Hey, Andrew!

Since you're low on resources, we'll work with what you have.
But as soon as you can put together a proper gritty soil, your Jade will be much healthier.
A key thing to remember is that Perlite won't alter the drainage characteristics of the mix
(until the mix is mostly Perlite), but it will reduce the overall water holding capacity of the mix.

First, many folks will comment on the size of the container.
For a Jade cutting of this size, a small container will do. With a larger container,
and with a water retentive mix, the risk of rot/root-rot increases.

The current mix will hold a lot of water, despite the Perlite.
So water very, very lightly until the cutting has rooted and shows signs of new growth.
I see that the mix is already wet, so hold off watering. Jades will root in empty terra cotta
pots, or simply laying on the soil of another plant.

And keep the cutting in a shady/protected area. It'll root faster.

Josh

Ok, Josh. You just sent my head spinning.

You posted "...Perlite won't alter the drainage characteristics of the mix..."

I thought that that was what perlite was for...to add drainage. You put the perlite in, the water runs through the soil faster and doesn't get absorbed by the perlite.

Am I just nitpicking here?

As I get more experience I can see that I still need to improve the soil for some of my plants. My last "improvement" was 3/4 perlite, 1/4 soil. Perlite is what is available locally and I can lift the bag. But if perlite doesn't help drainage, when the heavy winter rains come, my plants that aren't in a 3:1 mix will be in big trouble if I don't repot them.

Hey Penny,

If I may quote him

"A key thing to remember is that Perlite won't alter the drainage characteristics of the mix
(until the mix is mostly Perlite), but it will reduce the overall water holding capacity of the mix."

I don't know how to bold or underline here, but the key point is the phrase

(until the mix is mostly perlite)

That's when it will help, when the Perlite is there in enough QUANTITY to actually make the difference.

I believe that's what was meant.

thanks for the advice everyone

Here is the process I use for rooting jades:

1)After removing the cuttings from the mother plant I usually let them sit outside in a flat in the shade. They will callus over pretty quickly here in San Diego, usually within 24 hours.

2)I start my smaller cuttings out in 4" pots filled with

• 3 parts standard potting mix

• 3 parts perlite

• 1 part course sand

3)For small cutting I place them about 1" deep in the potting soil mix, and then put them where they will get bright shade all day long

4) When the mix starts to get dry I will water it (only a second or 2 per pot). I usually have to water 1x a week.

5)After I notice growth of the cuttings I transfer them out to full sun and water accordingly. Normally about 1x a week if its nice and sunny, 1x ever 10-14 days if the weather is cludy, overcast cool etc.

I usually get about 95% success with this method. 48 of 50 cuttings will grow, usually 2 or 3 were too small or had no leaves etc and will eventually die.

I will post a picture in a bit so you can see what I am talking about.

Here we go:

These have been in the soil for about 2 weeks now

These have been in pots for about 5 weeks?

Wow...that's a lot of cuttings! You must have an outlet for all those cuttings...Ebay?

How long does your cuttings normally take to develop roots in that mix? Thanks for posting!

Hey, all!

Penny, Pirate Girl is absolutely correct!
The drainage characteristics of the mix won't noticeably change until the significant majority of the
mix is Perlite - I think it has to be 70 percent or more.

Otherwise, the fine mucky soil merely lodges between the Perlite particles, like pudding between
marbles, and the overall mix retains the poor drainage characteristics of the mucky soil/pudding.

Perlite does have value, though, in that it reduces the *amount* of water held in the soil.
However, the Perlite also reduces the room into which the roots can grow, so it's a trade-off.

The best solution is a properly made mix that you won't have to go to great lengths to dry out.

Josh

Oh, sorry. I left off the part that most of my succulents are about 1:1 perlite/soil. Just the most recent repotted ones are 3:1 perlite/soil. I belived that perlite, in and of itself, improved drainage, after all, it didn't soak up water.

Josh, the marble/pudding analogy was perfect. That's a great way to help newbies understand what took me so long to finally comprehend!!!

Thanks!

Penny

puglvr1:

My mom just opened a booth at the local farmers market a couple weeks ago, so I planted all of these out for her so she could have some random things to fill in with what she sells.

I would guess that they probably start developing roots after about 1.5 weeks and are pretty well established @ 3 weeks? But this is in a greenhouse where I keep to average daytime temp around 85 and nightime at around 65, so it would probably take longer outdoors.

Hey, Penny!
Thanks! I borrowed the analogy from Al (Tapla), a great contributor here.
Credit where credit's due....!

Josh

I forgot to ask this, but i have plenty of root hormone, should i use it? It's powdered if that matters. (I also have the root hormone I make out of a nearby willow tree that is a liquid)

Also, do all jades get the red tips when they have good lighting? I had settled for my bright green, but I would love it if i could get them to have those red tips.

You don't need the rooting hormone.

When you start watering again, a little willow water couldn't hurt ;-)

I think that most Jades will develop some color on the margins,
though some varieties more than others of course.

Josh

So i would like to update. Maybe a week after this post, the tip started to rot, so i made a new one. After that, I placed the cutting just on the top of the soil, I didn't want it to risk it rotting again. When I did this, I also took a leaf off and put rooting hormone on it.

Today, the first time I have checked it for roots, I found some. I read on here a couple of times that I am supposed to wait for new growth, but it never stopped growing. So I waited about a month, and here are the results!

The stem:

Here you can kind of see the two places where roots are coming in.

And the leaf, with more, and longer, roots than the stem

Sorry about the poor quality pictures, my camera always has a hard time focusing on small things at night, and in my excitement, I didn't want to wait for tommorrow to take pictures.

Andrew

Success!

Now that they have roots, pot them into a small container.
Wait a little longer for those roots to really bite into the mix, then give them some water.

Josh

Will do!

andrew

I have had a few jade leaves laying on top on the soil like mentioned above but after about a month I am only seeing a couple small roots coming out, am I doing something wrong?

I cannot get mine to root to save my life! I have tried everything everyone on here has told me and still no luck. It's gotten to the point that the leaves are starting to shrivel up. I'm at my whit's end with it! It's a beautiful variegated crassula ovata too! Until the plant is completely shriveled up I will continue to try but I fear it's on it's last leg. I'm pretty disappointed I can't get it to root.

~Erin~

Stick with it, Erin! ;-)
Sure, you may lose it in the end....but if it still has leaves, it has a long way to go.
Your cutting could lose every single leaf, and still root.

Josh