@Raedilly Jades and portulacaria (mini-jade/ spekboom/ elephant bush) are best pruned 1-3 weeks before the summer solstice, depending on where you live. Reason: pruning too early in spring means that growth that occurs due to back-budding will still be leggy with long internodes - exactly the type of growth we don't want on our plants. Pruning around mid-June (in the Northern Hemisphere) ensures that all subsequent growth will be tight, internodes short, and leaves smaller. The strategy is: Prune all leggy winter growth off 1-3 weeks before the summer solstice. Allow all new branches that occur after the initial pruning to develop 1 or 2 pairs of leaves, then pinch. This will force new branching in the axils of both or all 4 leaves which can probably also be pinched the same summer. This method ensures much better ramification (leaf and branch density) and multiplies many times over the number of branches you can choose to compliment the composition. Stop pinching sometime in September (early September, for Chicago) and allow all branches to grow unencumbered by pruning until just before the next summer solstice when all lanky winter growth is removed and the process started all over again.
Proper pruning/pinching and timing/technique ensures that ALL growth is tight and compact. This also plays an important part in how the plant responds to hard future pruning that will be necessary as branches (especially those higher on the plant) become too heavy. If you prune back hard to a point where the nodes are on growth that occurred during the dark months, branches will be much farther apart than they would be if you had made the effort to retain summer growth and prune off all growth occurring during the dark months.
You can make your plant much more attractive if you start eliminating all branch trifurcations, which turn's them into bifurcations. Where the handle of a slingshot splits to form a 'Y' is a bifurcation. If the central branch leader is allowed to grow through, a trifurcation will form at every pair of leaves.
I use this line drawing I made to explain the bifurcation/trifurcation thing when doing workshops or demos using plant material that has a leaves and branches arranged in alternate pairs. Maples have the same growth habit.
Thought - the closer the plant is to the equator, the more flexibility one has with the timing of the pruning, which should be read to say 'the earlier you can do your first pruning. Someone living in the deep south could do the first pruning in mid-May with good results, but BEST results will still be had if the pruning work is done in June.
Al
