The Jade plant is more than just one of the easiest to grow succulent plants. They are renowned for absorbing toxic chemicals from around the home.
While easy to grow, you can easily break them, so it makes sense to know, can you grow the hardy succulents from a broken stem?
Luckily, you can use a healthy stem to propagate and make new plants for yourself or give them as gifts to loved ones. You can also find as long as you follow the proper steps, stem cuttings grow quickly, even for those without a green thumb.
In our guide, you can learn more about how to propagate jade plant from a broken stem or from purposely removed stems. By the end, you’ll know enough how to propagate jade cuttings from jade stems or other succulent plants. (Learn How To Propagate Bamboo)
Can You Replant A Broken Jade Stem?
Starting with a stem cutting is the quickest technique to cultivate a jade plant. Cuttings of any size, from little to large, can grow young jade plants.
Is it possible to do it with a broken stem? You can use cuttings from a broken jade plant stem for jade plant propagation. All you need to do is be sure that the rest of the stem is healthy to grow your new plant.
First, cut and separate the broken plant part from the healthy part using a clean cutting tool.
If possible, keep 1-3 inches of your healthy stem as this offers space for the stem to readily produce roots. Normally, your stem will be adorned with a few sets of leaves that you’ll need to remove. Do this, and you’ll get more leaf joints.
Allow the bottom part of the stem to callus after you cut the damaged part from the jade plant stem, which happens after a couple of days. To do this, place your cuttings on a clean paper towel.
Avoid watering the cutting as you are waiting for the cutting to callus. After a few days, you can move your cutting to the top of a suitable succulent soil mix, and then jade plants grow a new plant from your jade cuttings.
How to Grow a Jade Plant from A Broken Stem
To successfully grow jade plants, there are a few more things to consider. If you want a home grown jade plant, you can run through this section about how to get young plants to thrive indoors from a broken part.
Sunlight
Jade plants make great outdoor plants as well as growing indoors. Jade survives in bright light, and you can expose your plants to direct sunlight for four or more hours. (Read What Does A Plant Need To Survive)
To survive indoor, keep them in a sunny area so they can access the appropriate sunlight.
Water
Jade plants, like other succulents, require water. However, be careful not to over-water them. Simply keep the soil damp but not completely saturated. During the summer or hot season, they require more water than during the winter or cold season.
So, in the summer, it is recommended watering more frequently, and in the winter, they recommend watering less frequently.
Jade plants, like other succulents, require water. However, be careful not to over-water them. Simply keep the soil moist yet not totally wet. Your new plants will need more water in the summer or hot season compared to a cold season.
Temperature
They thrive in temperatures between 65 and 70 degrees Fahrenheit during the summer and can withstand temperatures as low as 50 degrees Fahrenheit in the winter. If you live in an area with a four-season climate, you should know the proper temperature for your succulents.
Soil
Succulent plants do not thrive in compact soil, yet they can tolerate poor soil. They need a quick-draining soil mixture with an ideal pH level for effective growth.
Fertilizer
Succulents like Jade Plants don’t need a super nutritious soil, yet they need to be fertilized during the growing season.
Re-Potting Jade Plant
Plants grow bigger every year, and you can find jade plant bushy compared to the year before. As a result, you may find your pot is no longer the appropriate container, and you need a larger pot. Do this in summer or a warm season. Luckily, it is easy to do.
- Make sure the general potting soil is dry, hence the reason for a warm season.
- Remove the pot and keep the roots of your jade plants clean. Remove all the dead roots, if you can see any.
- Place the jade plant in your new pot. You can dip roots in the rooting medium and then fill your pot with fast-draining soil or a succulent mix containing peat moss or coarse sand.
- Once you re-pot the jade plant, leave it a few days or up to a week without water.
- Begin slight watering to avoid root rot or other issues from watering too early. Jade leaves contain enough fluids for them to survive this first period.
Tip: To cut the stems, use clean, sterile clippers or a knife. Before cutting jade stems, sanitize your clippers by dipping them in rubbing alcohol or washing them in soapy water.
Remove a few sets of leaves if there are leaves growing down the entire stem. The leaf joints along the stem of a jade plant cutting will root, so the more leaf joints you have, the better your chances of getting roots. (Read Plant With Pink Stems And Green Leaves)
How to Root Jade Plant Cuttings
Taking the cutting is the first step in growing jade plants from cuttings. First, choose a branch of the jade plant that is disease-free and healthy. The branch should be 3 to 4 inches long for rooting a jade plant.
If you try to root the jade plant cutting you took wet, the wound will be wet and attract sickness. Instead, allow the jade plant cutting to rest in a dry, ideally warm, location for one to two weeks or until a callus forms.
To ensure that the disease does not infect the jade plant cutting, you can dust the open wound with rooting hormone, which also contains an anti-fungal compound.
If you’ve ever tried to propagate succulents before, you’re probably aware that many species only require a single leaf. You can utilize any leaves you have, whether freshly plucked or fallen, to make new jade plants to enjoy!
You can delicately pluck your leaves off the stems of a jade plant. But, first, make sure the entire leaf is removed.
To prepare your leaves for propagation, give them a few days to heal over, just as you did with the stem cuttings. Once you have them, you can choose whether to propagate them in water or soil.
Leaf Propagation for Jade Plants You can still propagate jade plants with only the leaves of the jade plant is little, or you can only pick a few leaves from it. Start by selecting a healthy leaf from the plant for establishing a jade plant from a leaf.
Take a leaf from the plant and snip it off. The next stage in growing jade plants from leaves is placing the leaf in a potting mixture of half vermiculite or perlite and half soil. After placing the jade leaf in the potting mixture, water it once and then sparingly until the leaf develops roots.
Make a clean cut of the stem with a sterilized knife or scissors, making sure to choose a portion with at least two nodes (bumps on the stem that leaves and roots can grow from). Include a few healthy leaves as well. Any stem cutting size will work, but larger cuttings are usually more successful.
Leave only a few healthy leaves at the very top of the cutting after carefully plucking away the leaves from the bottom. Keep any leaves you pluck if you wish to grow new jade plants.
Allow three days for the stem cutting or plucked leaves to dry out in a warm, dry location. This is so that the cut’s damaged edge heals and callus, making it less susceptible to rot.
You can directly root your jade plant leaf cuttings or jade plant stem cutting in soil. Because succulents are so hardy, this method of jade plant propagation almost always succeeds.
Tip: Stem cuttings that have jade plant leaves that haven’t yet developed roots, and you can see your leaf cuttings droop.
This is typical when propagating jade plants, but if yours appears to be going to fall over, support it up with a stick or something similar. It will grow erect once the leaf joints have rooted.
Move your leaves into bright light, but not in direct sunlight once they’re all in the soil and spray every few days to keep the soil slightly damp. You can gradually transition to a standard succulent watering regimen once your jade plant propagation shows roots and baby plants have appeared.
