Propagating Jade

Propagating Jade

Jade is a long living succulent that has amazing bright green leaves. It took me forever to figure out the best method for propagating jade. I think it is important to first understand how to take care of jade, so check out our post on caring for your jade. 

If you already have a jade that is healthy, it is easy to propagate. If you have seen our tutorial on propagating other succulents, you would know that usually, you wiggle the leaf off. However, for jade plants, when wiggling off the leaf, it tends to snap on the neck of the leaf which drastically lowers your chances of propagation.

So what I do is take my tiny little pocket knife, and cut it as close to the stem as possible.

After you have a couple of cuttings you can fill up a shallow bowl with fast draining soil and stick the cut ends of the jade leaves into the soil directly. If your soil is wet, wait a couple of days in order to ensure they don’t get root rot. If your soil is dry, try waiting 3 days before watering them.

For propagating jade, I have found that they like more water than other succulents. Therefore, I use a container without a drainage hole. You aren’t going to keep the jade in here for very long, so not having drainage shouldn’t affect your jade plant.

Then you can water them every week with a good soak or whenever the soil is getting dry. Place on a sunny windowsill or under a grow light or outside if water enough(above 50 degrees F).

Here’s the trick and where most people go wrong!

Be patient. These are seriously the slowest propagating succulents I think I have. Unless the leaf shrivels up, turns black and is rotted looking, just keep it in the soil and don’t check on it. If you pull the leaf up to see if anything has formed, you will break off whatever roots it has been working so hard on for the past couple of weeks.

Trust that it is doing its thing. Eventually, little leaves will pop up. Here is some little babies that grew from my cuttings from a couple months ago. Once the new jade grows, the old leaf will begin drying up and will fall off.

Just be patient and keep giving it love.