That comment about my jade plant pruning changed everything

My neighbor Margaret walked by my porch last month and said "you know, you're cutting those branches way too close to the leaf nodes." I had been trimming my jade plant for three years the same way and wondered why it always looked stubby. She showed me how leaving a little bit of stem above each node lets the plant push out TWO new branches instead of one. I tried her method on just one branch back in June and now it has 4 new growth points while the rest still look bare. Started doing it to all my succulents and the difference is night and day. Has anyone else gotten pruning advice from a random neighbor that turned out to be completely right?

2 comments

2 Comments

wendy_wilson6d ago

Has it ever struck you how often the best advice comes from someone who just happens to be looking at the same thing you are, but from a different angle? I think that's why neighbors and strangers can be so helpful, they don't have any investment in what you've been doing wrong. Margaret didn't care that you'd been pruning for three years, she just saw a plant and knew what it needed. It's the same with the guy at the hardware store who told me to use a putty knife instead of a scraper for old paint, or the lady at the bus stop who explained why my bread wasn't rising. We get set in our ways and stop noticing the obvious until someone fresh comes along and points it out.

kair655d ago

Right, and the flip side of that is sometimes the worst advice comes from the same place. Someone fresh who doesn't know the history of a problem can give you advice that works for a perfect world but falls apart when you have, say, a 100 year old janky window frame that's been painted 12 times. That putty knife advice works great until you hit a spot where the previous owner used some mystery glue that turns the whole thing into a sticky nightmare. You gotta know when to take the shortcut and when the shortcut is gonna cost you more time.