Thanks for inquiring Marguerite! Well, it's been a struggle... The large piece finally seems to have rooted and drank some water, it hasn't gown at all and it lost a couple bottom leaves. I added the fine sand as there were roots poking out. There was a tiny little variegated piece, it shriveled and died. A couple months ago there was a tiny solid green jade cutting that needed a home, so I stuck it in. I just started to use weak dosage of Foliage Pro, so hopefully it will put out new growth soon. Nancy

Martin, my fertilizer is russian know-how ))) It's an infusion of banana peel. It is good suitable for tropical plants in Siberia. It contains very little nitrogen and iron, and sufficient calcium, magnesium, potassium and phosphorus. Nitrogen excess can lead to variegation loss. Your chinese ovata may be 'Lutea'. My 'Lutea' are from China too. I think 'Lutea' can turn into 'Alba' in full sun. Light fragments of 'Lutea' become more light yellow under LEDs. While the shoot 7 on my pic remains light green under linear fluorescent lamp. Hi, Ben! What do think about them now? Oksana.

Yes, it looks to be sun damage. Mine suffers a bit unless it is slowly acclimated to strong sunlight. This is an excellent Jade called 'Maruba Nishiki.' I have read that it might be a cross between 'Hummel's Sunset' and an oblique leafed Jade. Josh

The direction of the branches is what you allow: my first step would be to repot into terra cotta with Al's Gritty Mix. When you repot, do so with a future in mind: is there a branch you imagine being a future trunk? Do you want an upright? A multi-trunk? I'm going to bet you find 2 separate plants - do you want to separate them or keep them together? Look at some pics of Jade that are similar to the way your jade is growing to get ideas. If you want to go in the direction of a bonsai, one rule is that there should not be trifurcations (a single spot where the plant breaks down into 3-branches). I can see at least one spot with trifurcation (A, B & C in pic 1). Remove the branch that is growing toward the center, or too upward/downward. I'd probably remove branch A as it is smaller and the other two give more to work with, but I can only see a pic of the plant - you have the real thing in front of you. After that, I'd probably just let it grow. You could chop it way back, and get more branching (ramification) lower on the plant, but I'd let it settle into a new pot. There are really two pruning methods: clip n grow, and harder pruning. With the first, just let each branch grow until it has 5-6 sets of leaves (nodes with leaves growing out of each side) and cut/pinch it back to 2-3 branches (do all branches at the same time). With the other approach, you just let the plant grow for a season or two before each prune and trim it back harder, even removing all leaves.