Jade Plant, Money Plant, Crassula Ovata Care Suggestions

[Transcript]  Hello and welcome to gardening at 58 north.  In this video we talk about Jade Plants and how to look after them and what kind of care that they require.  So, Jade Plants here, this is one of my biggest ones and this is just an example of the kind of size you’re getting in a garden center when you buy a Jade Plant, or it could be a little bit bigger than this but generally the ones in the garden center are quite small.

Jade Plant, Money Plant, Crassula Ovata Care

These plants are some of the easiest plans to actually look after.  They can probably put up with a lot more neglect than your average house plant and they can really handle very little watering which is a real bonus.  So, the main thing you want to worry about with your Jade Plant is watering and light.  If you can get those two perfect, then the plants going to do well in almost any situation.

They’re very tolerant of temperature so you wouldn’t have to worry too much about temperature.  As long as they don’t get frost and as long as it’s not above [probably meant “below”] about 40 degrees they’ll be absolutely fine.  They can handle really high temperatures.  As I say they can handle really quite cold temperatures as long as it’s not below freezing.

Crassula Ovata, Jade Plant, Money Plant Care Tips

So, when it comes to watering you really got to be quite careful with the Jade Plant because they don’t like the roots to get too wet.  Because they come from South Africa in the wild they do like a very dry hot environment.  So, if it gets too wet the roots will actually rot off.

So, what you want to make sure is when you’re watering your plant you want to put your finger into the compost fill if it’s damp or not.  If you feel any dampness even if you dig down a couple of centimetres or an inch and you find this damp I wouldn’t water it.  Wait until the pot is completely dry.

Then once it’s completely dried give it a good soak of water.  Let it run out at the bottom leave it sitting there for about half an hour and if you come back in half an hour and if there’s water in the tree you need to throw out that water and put it back in the tree checking in another half an hour.  And make sure there’s no water in the bottom

The main thing that kills the Money Plant is over watering.  So, if you water it and you’ve got water sitting in the bottom of the pots or the bottom of the saucer that’s gonna cause the roots to rot.  So, you want to make sure there’s no standing water.

You also want to make sure there’s actually holes in the bottom of your pot like these sorts of things here.  If there’s not holes in the bottom of the pot you have to be really careful because you don’t know how much water there is and there could be excess water.  So, you definitely want to have a pot with holes in the bottom so the water can drain out so you can’t overwater it too easily.

I have to say once you water it don’t water it for a while.  Let it go completely dry so you can feel down it’s quite dry and only then water again because if it stays consistently wet the roots will rot, will start to rot.  So as long as you keep that method of watering you shouldn’t have any real problems with the roots of your Money Plant.  So, the main thing is give it a good water and let it completely dry out.  If the roots don’t dry out they will start to rot.

The other thing that you want to do to keep your Money Plant healthy is to give it plenty of sunshine.  They do come from a hot sunny area of the world.  They do like a lot of light.  That being said, they are quite
tolerant of shade as well.  If you grow them in a shady position though you’ll find that the leaves will be slightly larger and the plant will be long and leggy.  The space in between each leaf here will be very long and the plant would be very leggy and it might even start meandering and even flop over.

So, if you see any light long shoots or anything like that or you have a long shoot and there’s no branching on it that means that there’s not enough light.  If the plants healthy it will have short stocky stems like this with a small space between each leaf.  And also, it will be naturally branching like this one is here.

You can see in this last plant here it’s been naturally branching his whole life.  So, that means its had plenty of sunlight and it’s been quite happy.

Now if you really want to turbocharge the growth and make it grow really fast you what you want to do is give it a lot of water a lot of feed.  So, this one here has had that regime and as you can see it’s quite big it looks like quite an old plant, but this is only about four or five years old.  So, it’s actually quite young for a Jade Plant.  Especially

since Jade Plants can live for many many years.  So, it’s a way to do that is during the summer time I would have to give a high nitrogen feed.  Most succulents I wouldn’t recommend a high nitrogen feed.  But I find the Jade Plant does particularly well with it.  That will encourage these really large glossy green leaves.  If you want big green glossy leaves that’s what you really do to Jade Plant and give a high nitrogen feed.  I would give that all summer long.  Over winter and spring and autumn I wouldn’t really feed it at all.

If you’re trying to get yours to flower though then I would give it a tomato feed in the autumn time and that’s high in phosphorus and potassium and that really encourages good flower formation.  So, you can switch to that in the autumn if you’re wanting it to flower.  But most people won’t be getting those to flower and the reason for that it is a little bit tricky.  Unless you have a conservatory where it’s quite cold in the autumn period you’re not like to get flowers on your Money Plant.

So when it comes to watering in summer check it quite regularly.  You’ll find especially if you do large plant like this in a small pot like that, you’ll find that even if you water it a good amount you’ll dry out within a couple of days.  So, you can actually water as quickly as almost every 2 or 3 days if you have a mature plant in a small pot.

If it’s a plant like this you’ll probably only water about once a week, every 2 weeks something like that during the summertime.  But it’s basically whenever the pot dries out.  There’s not a set time to do the watering so you won’t say every week.  We have a few days because the reason for that is the watering is completely dependent on the pot size, the amount of daylight it has and also the temperature.

So, if it’s in a vase sunny position for example with a small pot it will drink up the water from the pot really fast it might need watering almost every other day.  If it’s in a large pot in a shady position it might only need watering once a month or something like that.  So there’s never a set schedule when you water it.  It’s just whenever the compost dries out that’s when you need to water.

The only exception to that is winter.  Over the winter period I would completely stop watering for probably two or three months just giving it a tiny bit of water every now and again.  And the way to tell if it needs watering over winter is you can feel the leaves.  If they feel a little bit soft or if you see them starting to wrinkle up, then I’ll give them a small amount of water over winter.  But otherwise, you want it to be completely dormant during the winter time otherwise they’ll start getting leggy growth or you’ll get problems with the roots rotting off.

Now another method of turbocharging the growth on your jade plant is
to use a rich compost mix.  So, what I personally use is actually a peat-based multi-purpose compost.  You could also use a [?] based or any kind of peat substitute.  So, as you can see here that’s mixed in with a lot of perlite and the reason for that is if you have to grow this in a peat compost on its own it’ll very quickly rot off.

But if you have a lot of perlite like this here which is the white material this is basically it’s a bit like gravel.  It lets a lot more air and water flow through the mix.  That stops any kind of problems with rotting keeps the plant roots really healthy.  See I do about 50/50 mix so there’s a really good drainage of my mixes.  If you’re more concerned about your Jade Plant about watering that’s a bit deficient it makes it really good.

I tend to if I want to really make the plant grow fast and it isn’t a small pot I use a mix of probably only 25% perlite.  But then you can start getting problems with root rot if you’re not careful with watering or if the pot is too large.  I just say, if you really want fast growth give a really rich compost medium.  Water it every time it goes dry and give it quite a lot from the high nitrogen feed.

Now if you’re a bit worried about watering and you’ve over water plants in the past and you’re not too sure about that, I would either have that made with a 50/50 perlite or I would buy a succulent cacti mix.  If you put a Jade Plant in succulent cacti mix it’ll still grow quite well and healthfully.  It’ll just grow a little bit slower.  But at least you don’t have to worry so much about the watering.  Much more difficult for that compost to stay wet as it naturally free drains very easily.

So, going back to light requirements.  If you give this as sunny as position possible, as I say they are from South Africa, so they really like to have a strong sunshine.  But in a south-facing window you want an absolute maximum sunlight you can get.  If you do live in quite a hot country where you get very strong sunlight I wouldn’t give it the midday Sun because the midday Sun could be a little bit too much for it.

But certainly, if you’re in northern Europe or maybe Canada, Alaska you can give it a midday Sun all year round it’s not going to be a problem.  If you live somewhere in Texas and maybe near the Mediterranean, you only shelter a bit from the midday Sun.  But otherwise you want to give as much light as possible.

If it does have too much sunlight, you’ll notice they’ll be some red tinging on the edge of the leaves.  That’s actually looks quite nice.  There tingeing isn’t above a problem.  A lot of people grow in high light intensity just to get that red tinging.  But if the red tingeing is associated with also a yellowing of the leaf then that’s too much light.

If you’ve got a nice red tint but deep green leaves that’s probably getting optimum light levels.  As I said, get a red tint to the leaves on the wide on the margin but also the leaves are also going yellow that’s an indication of too much light.  You just want to take it away from the midday Sun and give it a bit of protection.

So, I think that’s all for my Jade Plant care video.  [End of transcription]