If you don't get ALL the old soil off the roots it's defeating the WHOLE purpose of the gritty mix. Yeah maybe the soil you use is fast draining but the soil around the roots is still the old water retentive soil so it will defeat the whole purpose because the soil around your roots will still be water logged. I believe it was joe who gave you great advice if he's the one I'm thinking of he has given me GREAT advice. He has lots of jades and knows what he's talking about. He wouldn't steer you wrong. Hope this helps :)

You are very right! It was Joe with the advice!
I'm 99% ready to revitalize my Jade :)

Would that gritty mix be suitable? :D

Yes, Joe was correct.

You remove all the old potting mix, rinsing, washing, using a chopstick to free it from the roots. The plant is small, and that's why we recommended potting it down a size.

The gritty mix listed on eBay should work well, although the fir bark is a little bigger than I would use. I like to screen mine a little more uniformly. When using a gritty mix, you must remember to fertilize....

Josh

Thank you so much! I'm ready!

This post was edited by bkvlad21 on Wed, Jul 23, 14 at 12:45

Thanks for the kind words.

As for the roots, you'd be very surprised how tough they actually are. There's this common myth out there that you have to be gentle and coddle your plant's roots, and it is just simply not true. I am down right brutal to the roots of any new plant I acquire that needs to be cleansed of peat moss soil. I put the rootball in a bucket of water, and use my fingers to tease the old soil off, and any gobs that just don't want to break free, I cut out or rip off. One final rinse under running water to get rid of any lingering perlite, and into my gritty mix they go, with an immediate watering.

You'd also be shocked, as most are, if you watched me repot my cherished 4 foot tall ficus alii. I tip the pot, pull it from the gritty mix it's in, and commence sawing the large roots off with a pruning saw. This year I removed 1/2 of the entire root mass, and it's doing just fine, losing only 2 leaves after a couple of months.

With all of that said, you should know that I do the above mentioned work on plants that are healthy, and can tolerate it with no problem at all. However, a struggling plant can survive it too, but will let you know that it's upset by wilting or dropping leaves. Moving your plants into a well drained, porous mix like the gritty mix and it's variations mentioned, is the best thing you'll ever do for your plants.

Joe

Um, just take care not to thrash the rootball so much that you lose the plant's ability to stand erect in the mix. You may then try to compensate by planting the plant deeper and that's problematic too for most plants other than tomatoes.

If it's not 'able to stand' in new potting mix, you can always support it with few larger rocks/stones - rather than planting it deeply. I do it frequently when potting new cuttings (or top-dressing with some stones-larger than what's in the mix-would help instead).

Rina

I agree with Rina; you'll want to support a freshly repotted plant in most cases. I usually raise mine up so there is no trunk under the soil line, then use rocks to support the trunk, or rig some solid wire to the pot somehow to hold it steady for a few weeks. You obviously don't want to terrorize the rootball more than you have to, but my point was that you don't have to lose sleep over damaging some roots.

Joe