While known for their glossy green foliage, you can also make a jade plant flower with some strategic tips and tricks!
We often buy plants on a whim without much research, only to find that they can hold surprising traits and behaviors! Just like you might expect your jade plant to produce flowers every other year only to get disappointed. If you are doing so, we have mentioned certain measures in this article that will make your succulent bloom,!
Does a Jade Plant Bloom?
Yes, a Jade Plant can indeed bloom, but it’s a rare sight for those growing it indoors. A flowering jade plant is a common sight in the wild, and it typically flowers in the winter, especially if it experiences cooler temperatures during the fall. The blooms are small, star-shaped, and either white or pale pink, forming in clusters at the tips of the branches.
How To Make Your Jade Plant Flower?
1. Get a Mature Plant
Jade plants need many years to grow before they can start flowering because they are busy growing their root system in their initial years. This means that you need a mature specimen that’s at least 3-4 years old before you can expect tiny white flowers at the tips.
Either get a mature plant or wait patiently for a couple of years before your plant can reach that flowering stage.
2. Mimic a Condition of Neglect
Native to South Africa, jade plants in the wild thrive under a lot of direct sunlight, that is, around 8 to 10 hours of direct sunlight, and that is when they bloom. When you grow jade plants indoors, they will probably be happy and healthy from receiving bright, indirect light. However, you got to move it out of its comfort zone if you wish to watch it bloom.
So, locate it near a south-facing window where it gets the maximum sunlight exposure, especially in the cooler months.
If you can place your jade plant outdoors on the patio or maybe in a safe spot in the garden, that would be even better. Incidentally, if you see your jade plant start to turn red, you can rest assured that you’re on the right track for flowers.
3. Keept it a Little Rootbound
When a Jade Plant becomes root-bound, it finds itself tightly squeezed within the confines of a small pot, feeling a clear limit to its growth space. This sense of confinement sends a stress signal to the plant, propelling it into a survival mode. In response, the plant may prioritize flowering as a means to reproduce and pass on its genetic material, seeing it as a necessity for survival.
Also, this limitation in space naturally restricts the plant’s growth. Instead of using its energy to expand its leaves and grow larger, the plant diverts its resources to flowering, as that demands less energy than increasing its size.
4. Provide Cool Nighttime Temperatures
The key to getting a jade plant to flower is mimicking its wild environment, which is not as warm and cozy as your home.
Similar to their native arid regions, these plants need to experience heavy fluctuations in their environment, such as warmer temperatures with bright sunlight in the morning and cool nighttime temperatures. The cooler temperatures encourage the plant to enter a rest phase, where metabolic activities slow down, and resources are conserved and redirected toward developing flowers. This is more of a psychological nudge for the plant to start flowering.
To replicate these conditions, you can move the plant to a cooler room or near a window during the colder months and move it to a sunny patch in the morning.
5. Hold off Watering and Humidity Around the Plant
As houseplant owners, we start treating water like the one-stop solution for anything that happens to our plants. The moment a plant looks off, we get serious about watering it.
But when it comes to getting a jade plant to flower, it’s all about neglecting its basic needs. If that sounds way too harsh, all you need to do is hold off watering and control the humidity around it. Let the succulent experience a few days of drought and utilize its stored energy. The goal is to mimic its native arid conditions that are famed for their dryness.
