Based on experience shared by Tom Robert on his blog: in praise of ramial wood chips. Building a Lasagna bed with ramial chips may not be a good idea: Quote++ Simply piled alone they store well, and in five years will look almost the same as they day they were piled. Summer chips (with green leaves) will heat up and rot down a bit, but there is so much more carbon in the chips than nitrogen in their leaves, that the brief period of initial heating soon subsides. Of course this depends somewhat on the type of woods being chipped, but getting more chips than you can use in a year or two is no real problem if you have a place to store them. Piles of chips are very porous, so they naturally tend to dry out quickly on their own unless covered with a tarp, straw or hay, etc. Since drying is preserving, simple piles of chips don't compost, they keep. End quote++ So using them along, they don't decompose much. Then if you add manure or more green matter, they compose very hot. Is that desirable in a lasagna bed? Quote++ All of the work done on building soils with ramial chipped wood recommends tilling the chips directly into the soil. I have done this sometimes, usually followed by a cover crop. When tilling in two inches of popple chips, I have found that there are temporary (one year) signs of nitrogen deficiency (poor crop growth, small plants with yellowing of leaves). By the second year these signs disappear. This may have been due to the large amount used, and the fact that some of the branches chipped were rather large. In future, I will be doing more direct tilling of chips into the soil using popple, alder and other mixed woods in separate sections, and chipping smaller diameter wood. The research quoted above has shown that ramial chips from climax trees (oak, maple, yellow birch, beech) produce the best quality soils, while ramial chips from conifers are the least beneficial. Mixed with cow manure, chips take more than a year to digest, so we no longer use them this way. However, over the past two years we have discovered that grass clippings have the necessary nitrogen to make chips "disappear" within a year when mixed at the rate of one grass to two chips and turned a few times. Such piles get VERY HOT very quickly. This past summer's pile is six feet high and thirty feet long and could be seen emiting warm vapor in the cool of morning and evening. End quote++ I am back to square one :) Here is a link that might be useful: This is from:

I also have what I call "log features" in the yard, and many rotting snags and stumps in various stages of decay. As I mentioned above, I leave old dead trees standing in the back yard (not the front because it's not visually appealing to most people) and they eventually fall over and become "log features". I am using some of them to edge a wild garden, or just leave them where they fall, because this is what occurs in a natural woodland. This dead wood, including dead branches on a tree, all provide habitat for insects, birds, and other critters! I have also watched the Pileated woodpeckers working away on a stump or log to get their insects. And yes, termites do inhabit some of this dead wood. Am not sure whether it's better to try to discourage them altogether, or give them some wood out there in the back yard to eat, instead of my house?? However, a log that is 5 x 12 feet is so massive, that I would proabably give it away on Craigslist to somebody with a huge chainsaw. :)

I haven't encountered this, but the article I attached below indicates that new growth on Jade can be either to a wound response or from 'residual meristem' (where leaves were once attached.) Unfortunately the article is not complete (unless you pay over $35, and it is mostly discussing growth of new plants from leaves I know the following can be done for apple trees. Never tried it for Jade. Find on the Jade stem where leaves were formerly attached. Take a sharp knife and above where a eaf was attached remove a shallow wedge of tissue. Do not cut all the way around the stem, nor cut too deep. The goal (on apple at least) is to remove a small amount of Cambium between the current growth point (higher on the plant,) and the dormant bud. This will block the chemical suppression the current growth point puts on dormant buds. On apple it doesn't always work and the younger the stem, the better it works. If you try this, let us know if it works on Jade! (I've never seen a Jade with a 16" stem (much less a 4 inch one).) Chris Here is a link that might be useful: Bontantical Gazette - 1976

What ever I use in the house for moulds, I use on my plants, Clorox, Purex, Windex. Spray them. Wait 5 minutes, and rinse. Make sure there is air movement around them, and get them out of peat moss, make sure they dry out between waterings, the bottom leaves may wrinkle, that will be your clue, to water again. This time of the year may be humid for you, if so cut down on watering. Make sure there is fast draiing soil, what color is your mold? Black mold, yellow mold, white mold? I have never had mold on my 'Jade' however I get it at the bottom of the apple trees, big time, they are next to a cement fence. This I would expect in the Eastern States, but now in our South West States. When you water make sure the root ball is also receiving it's share.