Oh and I'm growing these all indoors, the bulk are in a west-facing window (no south-facing windows). Three of them are under a flourescent light in the kitchen.
The next bunch are from the west-facing window.

More from window.

My kitchen trio.

This is the mother from above. I forgot I recently gave away one of the small ones, so I only have 7 (not the 8 I originally mentioned).
And in the kitchen trio, that *is* a Coke bottle and there *are* holes for drainage.

And the last post of pictures is this incredible out of control aloe which clearly needs help. I wasn't going to add this now but my wife insisted.
We also have 4 Christmas cacti but I think we're doing fine with them - they bloom periodically, which is always very pretty and a nice surprise (3 different coloured flowers on 4 plants, 1 each of pink and red, and 2 white).
And none of our plants receive fertilization (we only grow jade and Christmas cactus because we or the cat kill everything else).

TIA for your input!

Your Jades would do much better with more light, and would benefit from being put outside when the weather is warm enough.

You need to correct the lighting situation or else when you 'whack' the mother plant, it will just grow back with the leggy stems as you have now. How many stems do you have in the pot of the mother plant? It seems to be more than one plant, if it were mine I would only leave one stem per pot, I think it is easier to get a thicker trunk that way. I would also add more perlite to your mix.

Christopher

The mother has 4 stems but from one root. I've attached the best picture I can get of the base of the plant. Where they meet (or diverge?) is just below the surface of the soil. When I transplanted into this pot, I buried it a little bit as the single stem was very short, diverging early and I felt it needed the extra support.
I do plan on changing the soil mix when I either repot, or just to change the soil and I intend to either add more perlite or try something of a gritty mix (if it's going outside, we get rain more than once every 6 weeks, so I'm expecting to need better drainage).
I've put the large jade outside once but it seemed to get sunburned pretty quickly and the effect seemed to last for some time. The leaves looked like sunburned skin and developed a scab on its surface. That didn't seem like a good thing so I brought it back inside. It hasn't been outside since.
I'm clearly unsure about when and how I should put it outside after that experience so I've been reluctant to even try again. My west-facing window gets a very good amount of sun in the spring/summer. I thought the plant started to grow tighter after I started pinching new growth in the past year or so. Prior to that - where you see the thicker stems with no leaves - I think that was because of several years ago when I didn't know anything about jades and assumed you just watered it and left it alone.
While I'm reporting zone 7a, specifically I'm in Niagara Region (Ontario wine country). We have great success with our small vegetable gardening in the summer, frequently having warm temperatures into September (I'm just speaking to the temperatures we typically get in the summers here).

This post was edited by redout on Thu, Feb 27, 14 at 0:00

You can't just plunge an indoor plant into full sunshine. When you bring a plant outdoors, start out in shade, and slowly acclimate it to more sun. But the spindly growth indicates your plant is not getting enough light. Look at your cuttings also. If they were receiving enough light, you wouldn't need stakes on all of them to keep them upright. And some of the larger stem on the right is shriveling, not a good sign, either incredibly dry or rot.

The soil is much too organic, and I personally prefer a clay pot for Jades. You could separate the stems with a knife as long as you keep some roots on each cut portion. No way around it, this plant needs a lot of work. To me a severe whacking is in order, but as I said, if you can't improve the lighting, things will revert to the current look over time.

Here is one of my Jades, here in zone 5/6 at best in southern New Hampshire. This happens to be a "Gollum" type Jade.

Christopher