The Story of a Jade Plant
Crassula Ovata, common name – Jade Plant – is a native of South Africa. It’s a succulent with small pink or white flowers and has thick oval leaves. The description says it can grow to 24″ tall and that’s the exact height of ours now. Our plant has to be 40 years old.
Of course, this plants sets on the sun porch and gets the sunshine, as our porch faces south. We water it seldom — should be once a week, but we forget and let it go longer than that.
One time the plant got a bad case of mealy bugs and I was diligently trying to get rid of them using a Q-tip and rubbing alcohol. John passed by and said, “Let me move that thing out here on the back and I’ll spray it and get rid of the bugs quicker.” Okay, that’s what we did and he sprayed it with something that was all right to use (and it did get rid of the bugs), but the sprayer had had Round Up in it! We almost lost the plant — all the leaves fell off and I kept nursing it along ’til finally it started coming back. Then we had a new dog, when the Jade sat outside, and the dog wanted to chew the limbs off. Wow!! We’ve never moved it outside again. Before the mealy bugs the plant bloomed; however, it has never bloomed since and that has been at least 10 years ago. Also before the bugs we could put a leaf in the soil and it would root. We have not had luck with that since, but we do see signs now of a leaf taking root.
Jade
We had a service man here a little while back and he said he used to grow Jades for sale. He told us this plant is worth at least a $1,000. All I need is a buyer!!
Jade is an easy plant to grow and I recommend it highly. Inside gardening goes hand-in-hand with country living.
Need help in rooting rhododendron!! Can you help?
Try scratching a lower limb, put Root Tone on it and bury it in the ground — still attached to the mother plant. Put a rock on the buried piece to keep it down in the soil. Maybe by late spring it will have roots.
John roots of plants — never rhododendron. He used cat litter in his rooting bed not perfumed kind. Instead of Root Tone he used Gold Bond Foot Powder. I’ll get him to try rhododendron this spring. He roots tons of hydrangeas. Good luck. Thanks for reading the blog.
Thanks. Will try this. I am not experienced in rooting plants, but I love rhododendron, and would love to have several growing in my yard.