Hello, I have a jade plant that I've had for years but the leaves seem so sparse compared to pictures I've seen of most jades. It was quite overgrown and couldn't support the weight of its branches, so I heavily pruned it this spring. Since then, it's grown a ton of new leaves! However as you can see most of this leaf growth is near the top of the plant and the larger trunks are completely bare. I'm not sure if this is my fault because when it was small I never pruned it. How can I encourage more leaf growth towards the middle of the plant? Is that even possible at this point?

It also seems to have a tendency to grow outwards, not upwards, which contributes to its branches becoming too heavy for it to support. Is there anything I can do about that, other than pruning it again in the spring?

Thank you so much to anyone who's able to offer their suggestions!

to the forum.

I will let others weigh in with their thoughts on other subjects, but my advice would be to turn up the light. I realize BC is kind of dark in the winter, so there are limits, but that curtain needs to be up for the plant to do well. It should be right in front of your sunniest southerly window, if that is possible.

Low light gives you longer, weaker stems that fall over under their own weight. You can prune all you want (or need to) but in the end there is really no substitute for the brightest sunlight available indoors, for the longest possible time. The more natural light, the better.

Yup, that's what I would have advised. Its form looks quite nice.

Thank you so much Baja_Costero for your reply! That window is south facing and I normally do keep the curtain up all day, but you're right in the fall and winter we have a lot of cloudy days. For a while I wasn't great with opening the curtain which I think led to it developing the weak stems that I needed to prune. Now, I make a conscious effort to open the curtain every day so hopefully it won't develop the long weak stems that it had previously! I greatly appreciate your advice because I've only recently started getting more into taking better care of my plants so I can use all the advice I can get.