I give the one in our office a good drink every couple of weeks & it seems to do just fine.

Feel the leaves before you water - if they are nice and hard (i.e. filled with water), you don't need to water it. If the leaves are a little soft, water and then drain the excess. Jades and other succulents are prone to rot if you over-water - I've accidentally killed one that way before.

I hope it gets a little sun, too. It needs some direct light.

I use JenV's method. If the leaves feel a little soft or limp when I give them a gentle squeeze (top-bottom), it's time to water.

#1 and #3 beat me to it! They're pretty low maintenance plants...

I had to repot my jade a few weeks ago and bought one of those self-watering pots. The plant itself sits in an insert that has an unglazed terra cotta bottom with no hole, which in turn goes into a glazed pot that is partially filled with water. That setup is recommended for African Violets, so I was a little wary. It seems to love it, though, and I only have to make sure the water level is always high enough to reach the bottom of the insert.

If you can make it bloom you will deserve praise.

Goldy would probably know - he's good with plants.

Probably not as often as most people water them--they need to dry out completely between waterings. And if the leaves and stems start to get rubbery and floppy (not just a little wrinkly, that means it's ready to be watered--but actually droopy and limp), it's in trouble--that's probably rot, from getting too much water. The rot will spread and kill the plant unless you can stop it. Use sharp scissors or a sharp, clean knife to cut the drooping stem where it meets the main part of the stem, and throw away the damaged pieces.

Re: pic, if that is a solid glazed pot with no drain hole on the bottom, you need to be especially careful about overwatering—need to make sure that you feel the soil surface directly and only water when it feels almost completely dry. You'd be better off transplanting into a pot with drain holes and a saucer, so you can detect/eliminate excess water as mentioned above.

People forget that the roots of virtually all plants depend on the AIR that is naturally present in soil interstices to survive. They respire (take in oxygen and give off carbon dioxide) the same as virtually all living cells in order to power all the normal cellular functions and metabolic processes. The "circulatory system" of plants does not move oxygen from the above-ground parts to the roots to any meaningful extent the way hemoglobin-containing fluids move oxygen around in many animals; it mainly moves carbohydrates produced by photosynthesis in leaves into the roots as food (the "carbo" in carbohydrates becomes the carbon dioxide that moves into soil). If soil is water-saturated, e.g. an over-watered pot with no drainage, the roots literally drown and the plant dies.

Potted plants can also die if they're overfertilized. What happens then is that microorganisms in the soil start feeding on the fertilizer; their population explodes and they leave their waste products in the soil. This turns the soil acidic and kills the plant. A 10-20-10 fertilizer is too strong for a houseplant IMO. Try something milder.

Note that jades like to be root-bound. Let it grow into the pot you have for a while. I've upset a few jades by moving them up to bigger pots before they were ready.

In San Francisco, they grow into trees!

Well played @9

This just turned into the saddest "new column" ever.