I found an absolutely beautiful Jade in a dumpster when I was tossing my trash. I pulled it out and after trimming a bit it was absolutely fantastic. I proceeded to over water it and practically kill it. It got so bad that I thought it was a goner...and then I did the unthinkable. I cut off the entire matted and ruined root ball. The whole thing. I let it air a few days and stuck it in an awful mixture of street dirt. 6-months later, it is making a huge comeback. I barely water it now and give it a shower every six weeks or so to blow away any mites or whatever crawlies happen on it. It is doing fine. I happened on another specimen with an 8-inch trunk and I broke it up to make about 5 new plants with 4-inch trunks (the 8-inch was rotting). I'm hoping to get at least 3 of those rooted using the same method. Re-rooting a 4-inch trunk gave me some confidence with Jades. They seem to be really resilient if you sorta be a little mean to them ;-)

I'm not sure what you are seeing that I'm not seeing. The roots look fine. Why did you unpot it? Was something going on above the soil line that didn't seem right? The plant looks ok to me as well, so I'm curious. It looks like a very healthy root system... You know, one of the earliest things I read about Hoyas was to not disturb their root system unnecessarily. I've grown a lot of succulents over the years as well, and when you repot a succulent, you can whack away at the roots and do no harm. But I was always told when you repot a Hoya, it's best to disturb the rootball as little as possible - just plop it in a bigger pot and add soil and let it settle in. It takes a LOT of messing to get every bit of soil off a rootball, so I would expect it to go dormant for awhile now. Of course, that may have already happened just because of the change in environment... Denise in Omaha

The white surface you see is technically not the root. There is a layer of cells called velamen that surrounds the root, the actual root is a thin strand inside of this. The velamen protects the root and holds water like a sponge to give the roots more time to absorb moisture. It also contains chlorophyll and fungi that feed the plant. So you could have a section of velamen that is damaged but the root inside is fine.

I'm building a DIY hydroponic rail system that is growing lettuce and I have a resoivor that has a high quality air pump with 4 air stones and a pump. After about 8 weeks of what seemed like a successful system, I lifted my letuce pods and noticed the roots were turning brown which I suspected was root rot. Since I have air stones in my reservior, I do not understand how root rot would happen. At the beginning I noticed I had put too much nutrients in my reservior (900-1000 ppm) for lettuce, but tried to reduce that by adding mroe water over time. Since the lettuce seemed to be doing okay, I did not worry about it. Is it possible this is the cause of my problem or do I need to place my air stones in the rails closer to the plants?