Hi all, thanks for all the advice; I went out today in an attempt to make a cozy new home for my poor ailing jade. I bought I believe a 3'' circumference unglazed clay pot with a drainage hole and a dish, a bag of perlite, and a bag of orchard bark. They didn't have any kind of mix, except the cactus soil that I've been using. Should I just mix the perlite and the bark, or does it need anything else? I've heard undyed aquarium rocks were good too... Doug, thanks for the info; it's currently outside and gets some direct light right now. It was inside on a ledge next to a window getting very indirect sun all winter; I moved it out when the leaves started drooping for no apparent reason thinking that maybe it needed more sun.

Whacking = chopping off the smaller branches until you're left with a thick trunk and some slightly less thick major branches. Don't whack that plant -- it's not healthy enough. I don't know any brand names, but forget anything you can describe as 'soil'. There's a mix that's quite popular over on the Container forum, and it comprises equal parts calcined clay chunks, bark chunks, and rock chunks, all screened to be over 1/8" and roughly the same size. The bark is often quite hard to source in a hurry, so you have a couple of options. 1. Forget the bark for now and make the mix half clay and half rock. Will work for getting the plant out of the fluffy black stuff and into something kinder to the roots. 2. Use reptile bark, just as a one-off. Expensive, but easy to transport and requires little screening. What do you have to hand, anyway? If you can't get hold of anything but coarse perlite or small rocks, mixing either of those with just enough fluffy stuff to coat the rocks or perlite is better than nothing. It won't hold much air, but it can't hold much water either. If you can't even get hold of perlite or rocks, the main woody trunks look healthy enough that you can just depot the plant entirely and leave it somewhere dark and cool and dry (outside air dry, not AC'd inside air dry) while the sogginess goes away.

If the Jade went from growing in shade to being placed out in the Tucson sun, it definately got sunburned. It Will recover.....they are tough plants and about the only way to kill one is to overwater it.

I found turface and repotted the jade. The old soil was damp, it wasn't wet by any means, but it was probably very wet in the not so distant past. I reported using a mix of the turface, orchid bark, perlite and small marble chips. I propped it up with a few rocks just in case it wasn't stable but it seems to be okay. The roots did not seem to be wet, in fact some were fairly dry. I did not water it. I was going to wait until next Monday to water it. It has only dropped maybe a dozen leaves the last few days (as compared to the one hundred it dropped over the previous two weeks). Does Monday seem soon enough to water it? And how much water should I give it? Pictures of it are in the album