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Rant: killed my mom's 30 year old jade plant with too much love and I'm still not over it
My mom gave me a cutting off her jade plant back in 2019, and it grew fine on my windowsill in Boise for almost four years, slow but steady. Then I read somewhere that jade plants want way more water than people think, so I started giving it a good soak every week instead of every three weeks. Within about six weeks the leaves went soft and yellow and started dropping off every time I bumped the pot, and the stem got this dark mushy spot near the soil line. I tried to save it by cutting above the rot and letting the piece callus over, but I waited too long and the whole thing was shot by March. The worst part is my mom's original plant is this huge thing she's had since like 1991 that she barely waters, and mine died from being too nice to it. Learned the hard way that the plant was telling me what it wanted the whole time and I just wasn't listening. Has anyone else killed a plant by trying to fix a problem that wasn't even there?
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miaharris4d ago
My buddy did almost the exact same thing with a pothos his grandma started from a cutting back in the 80s, and he still brings it up at parties when he's had a few. He read that they like humidity so he started misting it twice a day and moved it right next to the shower, and it got root rot within a month from all the extra water sitting in the soil. He tried to dry it out by sticking it in front of a fan, which just made it worse, and by the time he asked anyone for help the whole thing was brown and limp. The kicker is his grandma's original plant is still going strong in a plastic cup on her porch that she waters maybe once a month. Your mom's jade survived three decades because she basically ignored it, which is a hard pill to swallow when you were just trying to do right by it.
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