Yes you are catching on. The plant still need more sun, and less water, for insurance cut off a stem that is getting roots and plant it. You must realize these are winter growers and not summer growers, mine flower in December and start to grow after the flowers dry up, starting about January, they need air circulation, and cool air, they need soil that drains rapidly, they don't like living in an apartment with a heater going. They are east African plants, and are domant when it is very hot. I have 24 different, so have a little experence. Pirate Girl lives in New York she may have a lot to add to this. I can see that the leaf nodes are still far apart this tells me more sun is needed and less water. Don't treat like it is your pet. Don't water it from the top, water from the bottom, don't mist the plant. No peat moss in the mix, red wood med. size would do much better. I don't normally respond to 'Crassula Ovata' problems any more because it just gets out of hand. Good Luck I hope you will enjoy your plant and stops giving you all of this trouble. The black spots are caused by cultural problems. Gasteria species also haved this problem. Norma

This definitely did not get enough sunlight, and is probably in soil that is too water retentive. I would lose the cachepot, it retains water and will end up causing root rot. If it were mine, I would remove from its pot, check the roots, remove any dead ones, remove any dead stems as well, and repot in a fast draining potting medium in an unglazed terra cotta pot with a hole in the bottom for drainage, and place in a window that gets some full sun. This plant is a winter grower, no harm doing this now. I think the sooner the better. Christopher This post was edited by kaktuskris on Fri, Nov 1, 13 at 22:40

Hey milly, Im in the uk and I use gritty mix, and I use reptibark from Amazon, turface I get from tesco cat litter, and perlite from anywhere, although I tend to leave out the bark these days because the only good stuff I can find I have to get from Amazon as reptibark and is too big so I literally spend hours in front of the tv with pliers breaking up the chunks! The things we do for plants... Perlite/turface alone does a great job ime, and I actually find it easier to water because bark sometimes "floats" to the top when watering. The cat litter is a tad on the small side, but as long as you screen the small bits it works great. Perlite is easy, normally very suitable sized particles, just screen out small bits, but make sure it doesn't come with any 'additives' like ferts. I would love to use a nice grit, cause perlite looks a bit garish, and always floats to the top because it's so light, also doesn't weight down plants all that great, but I can't for the life of my find a good source of grit which looks good and isn't expensive aquarium grit D: I'm sure @greenclaws will reply soon, but I'm guessing she adds abit of soil to increase water retention a bit? Gritty mix is fantastic, but is very gritty. For my drier succulents it's literally perfect, and it works great for other plants too, even my mango tree seedling! But you have to be reeeeeeaaallly vigilant with it, because sometimes it dries real quick and plants like jades can shrivel a bit and not achieve maximum growth potential. A bit of soil, while compromising gritty mix's aeration, can make the mix a lot more usable. I have jades in pure gritty, soil/perlite, and pure soil, and I do find my soil jades do better because I can't quite keep up with them. But only marginally. I dunno, that's my understanding anyway :P You also need to fert regularly with gritty mix. hope this helps a bit! Aaron

Cool your willing to use a make shift gritty mix. May want to sift some of the peat materail from the BBS bagged C&S soil as well. What remains after sifting is some darker bark pieces that looks like a finer mulch and some forest humus. Useable yield may vary, would think one bag of BBS unsifted bag O'crap should yield enough for all of them. You could also ( with some extra time on your hands) pick up a bag of orchid bark smaller size is better but any size will work from a BBS as well . After soaking them in warm water for a while the chunks will be eaiser to ( by hand) break it into smaller barkier pieces. Prior to sifting any especialy for Perlite I'd suggest to use some sort of mask for beathing protecing. Big drainage hole ? As in orchid pot drainage hole big ? The demo pic is a bit off. less humor or more fun ? Blue arrows. look sort of good as ASAP potting candidates for some practice for you but if me I'd cut them for newer cleaner root. Red lines suggest cutting them for re rooting and potted later Purple circle I'm Sort of mixed on this one. It can go either way. Bigger can survive longer but adapts more slowly.