I would like to trade for a cutting of Crosby's Compact. I have a wavy or ripple jade I could send you. I got it in a succulent dish, and it was unnamed. I'm attaching a picture, it is short, bushy, wavy leaves and has a slightly dusty leaf. Not as much as a Silver Dollar jade, but not quite straight green. It's in a 4" plastic pot, but I would send it bare root. I sent you an email earlier, but then remembered I had three of this one. Lennie in Grand Rapids, MI

The hours of light they get. THEY ARE WINTER GROWERS. Soon as it cools down they grow, they flower around Christmas on new growth so prune the end of Sept. they will start to grow after the flowers dry up, then you take the cuttings. Let the cutting dry naturally, no root hormones needed, put in small po up leaves up and set in winter light, if yu lay them down the tips will grow upwards toward the sun. watch for roots them plant, gradually repot into larger and larger pots, trim often while growing if you want a full growth on top, and heavy trunk, trim off side shoots for a single trunk plant, but then you have a chance of it being top heavy and it will fall, or break. If you want good color grow very dry, lush put in low light. Change out soil every year and there will be no need to fertilize also this plant loves to be crowded in a pot or between rock cracks and on a hill like in Africa. If growing this plant with a lot of humidity, cut way back on water or the leaves will crack or ooze, the ooze will turn brown or black on the leaves due to sun, they can also burn from heat or cold. Do not water when cold weather comes. I hope this input gave more clues in glowing this plant, please look at the pictures of the leaves and you will notice will black or red dots around the edge, those are the pores (hydathodes) which take in moisture at night, turns the nitrogen and process it for food then in the day time releases oxygen for us and causes CAM Crassuls Acid Metabolism first discovered in the Species Crassulaceae. They grow in the Winter here because we are the exact opposite of Africa, and Australia, and all countries below the equator. I can go further into this but I rather not. I abbreviated much of this so to keep it short. Please look this up in Google to get a complete explanation. They use nitrgen to make their own food, lets out excess during the day to make oxygen for us. Did not bother to proof. Much more but to tired to type more. Norma

Thanks, Rina, and Erica. Yep - drilled holes in the plastic bottles. I did wire one piece on the left-hand plant. The middle plant has two pieces drawn closer together with a single wire hooking each of them. I wanted to wire more but that's all I had laying around and its quite too heavy to work with (should have went out for lighter gage wire). I was making a real mess trying to wire them up so I stopped. Maybe after they're re-established ... As for watering, the small bits in the plastic bottles have not been watered, nor has the main plant - all still bone dry. The three pots on the table got caught in the rain for a bit but I gathered them up pretty quickly so they didn't get saturated. Maybe only the top 3/4" of soil is wet/damp. So maybe I'll wait till Sunday and water them all then. I kind of winged it on the soil. I ended up buying a bag of soil from a grower that they use for their succulents. The soil seemed a little heavy so I cut it 50/50 with Napa 8822 oil dry. We'll see ... Rina, not sure what you mean by "...was the old soil hard to get rid of". Frankly I thought the old soil looked good (pic below). Maybe another rookie mistake, but I didn't try to get all the old soil from the root ball. I scraped quite a bit off the top and knocked off what would come away relatively easy from the sides and bottom. There was quite a bit of roots exposed (which all looked really good) but most of the old soil went back into the pot. The pot is bigger than before ... 13" now compared to 10" before. I wasn't sure if I should replant it any higher so I replanted it at the same depth as before. I'll have to study up on the mealy bugs to know how to recognize new white stuff from old white stuff.

Jenna Sunlight will loose quite a bit of intensity passing thru the glass. And many windows are low E/UV protection. It may be very bright to us, but not as intense as we think to plants - definitely not in our zones IMO. I keep all succulents outdoors as soon as it is warm enough. They stay in full sun from sunrise 'till sunset. Few succulents do not need so much sun, so they are in location where there is mostly morning sun. Aquarium gravel will work, sometimes it could be bigger than ideal. As grains are getting bigger, there will be more difference in size between soil and grit and it may loose some of the drainage. Many of us use chicken grit - these particles are very close in size to perlite (or pumice and turface if using), especially if sifted (I sift or at least rinse perlite): You said: ..."I used my own mix of cactus soil w/50% perlite and course sand"... If I understand correctly, there is 50% C&S soil, and other 50% is made of perlite and grit. I think that's pretty good - personally, I wouldn't be afraid of using less soil (if any) and more of the other 2 ingredients. Doesn't mean you need to change your mix, as long as it is draining well and doesn't stay wet for too long. Your plants look nice - uniform growth, shiny leaves and they are not 'bending' toward light source. I see new growth everywhere. The reddish color will be there in more sunlight - but they do not look light-hungry (etiolated, discolored) now. If you have garden or terrace or balcony, maybe you can keep 1 pot indoors and 1 outdoors, to see if any difference. If you do that, make sure that plant going outdoors as acclimatized to sunlight - they will definitely get sunburn if not (difference between strong light indoors and direct sunlight outdoors is quite big - sunburn happens same to plants as to ppl :).