Neglected Jade Plant Gets Big Bonsai Prune and Repotting

I make mistakes and I've made a few with this jade plant but now this neglected jade is going to get the care that it deserves. If you saw this jade tree from far away you'd probably think there's nothing wrong with it. It looks fine, seems to have some happy companion plants here but when you get a closer look that's when you'll start to notice some things that are wrong like these burnt leaves. So I'm going to go over everything that's wrong with this jade plant and also share some important do's and don'ts when it comes to taking care of jade plants. I'm going to repot this jade plant and I'll show you why coming up. I'm also going to give it a bonsai prune because it below here it has this really cool tree-like structure that I want to open up and see a little bit better. The reason I need to repot this is pretty simple. Check this out. It moves around in there because the soil is so thick and dense. I used natural soil which is harder and not as well draining so unless I keep this pot soaking wet it's going to come off the outside and do this which is not good. This jade plant is starting to bloom. More on that in a second but first let's talk about these burnt leaves and you can burn your jade plants if you move them into the sun and give them too much light if they've been in a shadier area previously and that's what happened with this. As I just mentioned this jade plant it's starting to bloom which you'd think oh that's great your jade plant's blooming. No not great because it's going a couple months too early compared to the rest of my jades and the reason it's starting to bloom early in the fall right now is because well I stressed it out and a plant's natural reaction to stress is to start to bloom because it wants to save itself right it's like I'm gonna die I gotta make babies. I've already taken a lot of these burnt damaged leaves off but I'm gonna go ahead and do that take the rest off of them right now before I move on to the next project. Let this water soak in a little bit this is also going to help me get the jade plant out of the pot which as you'll see is probably going to be a little more challenging than you might expect. Taking these plants out now these graptoverias this guy's really cool it's some kind of euphorbia because it bleeds white blood oh god oh man oh well looks like I'll be repropagating that. Someone in the comments recently a couple a couple people have said you're really rough with your plants and it's like well yeah they are very resilient and they come back just fine and I haven't had many plants die on me. Another mistake I made is that I planted this jade plant in a pot that gets narrower at the top which means it's going to be hard to get it out even though it's already kind of moving so hopefully it'll come out easier than I anticipate. All right you want to come out just on your own? No. So it's gonna have to break up the sides here a little bit just to kind of get it going. Come on now. Jesus this is heavy. I got it oh boy I got it. Yeah Andy what do you think? Andy's a garden dog over here aren't you bud? Getting all dirty with me out here you're my supervisor aren't you? I'm gonna use water here to break down the root ball and that's gonna be very helpful because again this is kind of natural thicker soil and it's gonna take a little bit of effort to get all of the soil off of here. Water and roots water and roots. So kind of fun sometimes I will use like chopsticks to kind of get in here and do some work you know. I'm sure that there is an actual tool for this but I am always gardening on a budget and these work pretty well just to kind of get the roots out of here. I'm gonna call that good. I think that's gonna be just fine. I'm gonna leave some of that thicker soil on there but that's not gonna be a big deal. I've taken most of it off as you can see. I'm gonna replace it with some better soil that I'll show you and talk about a little more coming up. I'm naming the jade plant Scott because I'm repotting it in this vintage Scott's lawn fertilizer push thingy thing here. The minute I saw this thing I knew I was gonna put a plant in it. It looks so cool. The patina is great. I'm not worried about rusty metal in there because plants don't usually get affected by rust. I've planted plenty of things inside metal containers and never had a problem. I picked a nice sunny spot for this jade plant to live because jades in general love sunlight. Putting in my proprietary succulent mix here and all that is is organic soil with coco coir mixed in and I add plenty of perlite to give this jade plant a nice well draining soil which is really important and that's the mistake I made previously with this plant is the soil did not drain well. Got the jade plant coming in here there it goes yeah there we go oh no wrong way there we go yeah nice I like that I like that a lot oh man it looks even better than I thought it would. Throw this soil in there okay nice wow that looks good and it's in there nice and snug. The jade plant Scott is looking good. It's sitting in there really nicely and I think that's because there's a crevice in there it just kind of stuck in there and I'm happy I don't have to stake it up at all. I'm going to wait a couple days maybe a few days before I water it and give it the bonsai prune because I don't want root rot from watering it and I want these to perk up a little more when it was on the table they kind of hung down so in a few days I'll have a better idea when I prune it to get the look that I want. It's time to bonsai. I'm going to give this jade plant a really heavy prune then as a bonus I'm going to plant some little companion succulents around its base because I think that's going to make it look really good. I've decided I'm going to keep these side branches but I'm going to prune them up here pretty well here there we go that looks good and then I'm going to take this little guy off the back boom the same thing over here I'm just gonna take that take that it's which one it's gonna be you there we go since I'm gonna have so many jade cuttings from pruning this tree I'm going to do a video on how to propagate jade cuttings which will be super fun I can't even tell you the last time I pruned this jade plant and you can see by all of these downward branches so I'm going to be taking off a lot of those downward branches and then I'm also going to take some of these leaves because they're droopy they're not giving me the aesthetic that I am looking for yeah kind of a power move this guy's going off boom this jade plant is about to bloom none of the flowers have popped yet I'm going to try and keep as many flower heads as I can but at the same time I still got to take off what I want to take off downward branch right here cut that off I see what I'm working with I cut off my first blooming branch and I'm going to propagate it anyways and see if it still blooms I'm curious it'll be a fun experiment I'm gonna get rid of that one again I'm just pruning these to how I see fit what I want the look to look like so there's no perfect prune in my opinion so if you're pruning your jade plant keep in mind it doesn't have to be perfect there's no perfection and like hair it's going to grow back anyways this is a big callus and it looks pretty cool and there's another one in here that I want to clear up to be able to see because it really exposes the unique structure of this tree and I need to decide you know how am I going to open that up do I take that I'm going to keep that but now I can see it better and then I'll take some of these lower guys here like that some of this weight on this like that I kept the bloom there these long ones that are coming out the end there they're just going to start heading downwards so I'm going to take them and then I'm going to clear up this little section a bit there this one is really long out the back the back side has some long stretch you guys and I'm just going to take that off completely take this guy because it's already starting to head down no thanks I'm going slow I'm taking my time I'm cutting off one by one just to see you know what's what this is like my last really congested part that I'm not loving so I'm going to take this I understand how some folks would think wow you prune that back too much but that was the point I wanted to expose this nice thick branching that was the whole goal and sometimes after you do a hard prune initially it looks a little funky it looks a little awkward and then it grows over time to fill in of how you want it and that's what I did here I've done a lot of hard prunes like this I know it can be hard to watch but this is great and I'm so excited and now this tree is going to look the way I always envisioned it now it's time to find some succulents to plant around the jade plant so I'm going to look back here in my propagation zone this is also where I nurse a lot of succulents and plants back to good health I grabbed a bunch of different varieties of succulents to plant around the jade there I like to bring a bunch near so I can see does that look good does that look bad I have options and then I can figure out what's going to be the best got these sedums here that are going to get more red they've been in a shady spot so they're green but they're going to get some nice color coming so I'm going to put these in the front and eventually they'll kind of like leak out the sides here that's that's the goal pretty sure this is a pinwheel plant it just shoots out a bunch of little wheels I'm going to put that there because it'll grow kind of taller along this back side put that little agave back there put another friend here because a lot of plants they like they'll grow better when they have the same species or variety with them this guy came from the previous pot that this jade was in and I want him to have one of his friends with him so I'm going to put him in the corner like that this is a different type of sedum I've been propagating it'll get really dark red I think it's called firestorm I'm going to put this jellybean plant in theory these will all fill in super nicely and not too long I'm really pleased with how this jade plant bonsai project worked out Scott the jade tree here looks really good in its new vintage lawn fertilizer home stay tuned because I'm working on some really fun and creative plant videos that I'm really excited about