You can lead a horticulture... [LJ Genie]

[maradydd]

O my green-thumbed friends, perhaps you can help me with this one:

I have a large jade plant in my living room which one of my cats apparently decided to use as a scratching post while I was out of the country. As a result, two of its bigger branches have broken off under their own weight, and the wounds have become covered in a fuzzy black mold (it has the appearance and texture of bread mold, but black, not blue). What's a safe (for plants, people and cats) way to eradicate the fungus?

Comments

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

The best way to get rid of it is to (a) let it dry and (b) keep the cat away from it. The mold is from phloem sap being exposed to the air: if it has a chance to dry out, the mold will die and the wound will heal by itself. With those two broken branches, just put them into two separate pots, mold-side down, and let them reroot all on their own. (If you're really worried about the mold, just cut the branches above the mold with clippers or secauteurs sterilized with alcohol, throw out that chunk, and let the end dry out a bit to form a callus. The mold really won't hurt anything, but you pretty much have no option other than to grow two new plants from the branches.)

[maradydd.livejournal.com]

Oh, excellent -- I had pretty much given the branches up as a loss (the mold is actually on the still-rooted plant, where the branches broke off.) So I might end up with three jade plants, in the end! Cool. Thanks for the help! (And thanks for the advice on my other research question the other day, as well. I'll let you know how that turns out.)

[foxgrrl]

Three of your pots over here have little Jade trees growing in them now, because before they got here, there were leaves that had fallen into the pot… and eventually put down roots.