How To Care For Aloe Vera Plant

We have a little Aloe Vera plant that is already producing its second set of pups. We transplanted the first set and now have little Aloe Vera babies all over the house and now we are about to have more. Aloe Vera is a wonderful plant that has many uses and is also beautiful to look at. Here is some information on how to keep your aloe happy and hopefully make get it take some pups of it’s own.

Sun

Aloe plants love heat and sun. Depending on the type of plant you have and it’s conduction well depend on how much sun it needs. The tropical conduction where these plants love to live can very greatly. There are days filled with lots of sun and storms that can darken the sky for long a long time. For this reason Aloe can be kept in full direct sunlight or indirect sun light. We have found that ours likes whatever the south facing window will give it. Note that if you do have your Aloe in indirect sunlight and you plan on putting it in full sun you will need to spend some time Acclimating it to full sun or it will die. They really get use to the amount of sun light they are exposed to and will need time to slowly just to more or less light.

Soil

Aloe is a tropical/desert plant by nature they like well draining soil. You can make a mixer yourself or you can get cacti or succulent potting soil.

Water

Being in the family of desert plants Aloe does not like a lot of water. In the wild they would be subjected to long weeks with no rain followed by a good soaking or almost drowning in water. When water your Aloe remember to soak them thoroughly with water every 2 to 3 weeks. For larger plants you may be able to stretch it to a whole month but you have to make sure the pot and plant are large enough for that. We have Aloe we need to water every week, every 2 weeks, and once a month. A good rule of thumb is if the soil is almost completely dry its time to water it.

Food

We use a plant based seaweed plant food but we don’t follow the directions on the packaging. We find it is to strong for most of our plants and have found reviews saying the same. So we weaken the solution with water and use less than it says to but it works for all of ours plants.

Annual or Perennial

Aloe Vera is a Perennial. It doesn’t die out it just keeps growing and if it is really happy (which is very rare) it will even flower.

Climate

Warm and hot. The temperature inside your home should be fine as long as you don’t like your house cold. We keep our house at about 23.3 degrees Celsius which is about 75 degrees Fahrenheit and the Aloe in everyone is very happy even in the colder and hotter rooms.

Hardiness

Aloe is not very hardy. If it gets cold it will die. For this reason if you plan on growing it outside the recommended zones are Zone 10 and Zone 11.

Harvest

Harvesting Aloe Vera is easy but can only be done to mature leaves. Taking the top new growth will kill the plant. For this reason you should only harvest the leaves at the very bottom of the plant once they are fully mature. If you wait to long they will die and fall off on their own.

Transplant

My recommendation for transplanting on Aloe Vera plant is to wait until you see the roots forming on the outside of the bottom of the pot or if you left it out of the pot when it is dry and notice there are more roots that soil.

Tip

 When your Aloe produces pups wait until they are a little more mature before removing them from the mother plant and transplanting. It is very hard for smaller pups to grow and survive on their own as they are attached to and feed off of the mother plant. A good way to know if they are ready to be transplanted is if they have detached themselves from the other plant on their own. If you have to pull them off they are not ready to be out on their own.