Aloe Vera Plant Care and Use

My wife grows aloe vera plants – a lot of aloe vera plants. It would be unusual for us not to have 50 Aloe plants around the house. She’s had several of them for 30 years, and has two or three that blossom a couple times a year. She gives aloes away periodically to keep the house from being overrun.

We thought that giving aloes to my first customers would be a nice way of saying, “Thank You for Your Business.” This is the guide she includes with the plants she gives away:

Aloe blossom formation over a three week period.

Care for your new Aloe Vera plant:

Care:

DON’T OVER-WATER! It’s basically the ONLY rule you HAVE to follow! Aloes are self-sustaining, desert cacti. They WANT to be dry. If you over-water it, it will rot and die. The plant you now have in your possession will cost you about $50-80 to replace. They are not cheap when they are this large because it takes a couple years to get a parent plant to grow babies of this size. If you IGNORE yours well, you, too, will have a plethora of babies to sell or give away!!

Use:

Aloe vera is sort of Nature’s wonder cure. It is a cell regeneration stimulator, so it causes accelerated healing. Aloe is also the only proven cure for any type of 3rd degree burns (in conjunction with an non-steroidal anti-inflammatory medication like ibuprofen). Aloe is anti-bacterial, anti-viral, and antifungal when applied to wounds (including new surgical wounds) or sores, so it can be used on any open wound or ulcer. I have used Aloe religiously on all my family’s surgical wounds for years, as soon as the doctors say you can take off that first bandage, to stop the occurrence of keloids and speed healing! 

Word to the wise!

  1. The flavor of Aloe is not great. If you are using it as a mouth rinse, I usually mix it with a small amount of a non-alcohol based mouthwash (like Act non-alcohol formula) and dilute it with water so it can be gargled. My usual mix is about 20 ml Act with 20 ml aloe (complete matrix) and enough water to complete a 16 oz mix, then blended until basically smooth. It works GREAT for oral surgery, too!
  2. Aloe stains! If you let it sit on a countertop or get it on your carpet or clothes, you will get PINK stains. That is NOT true of your skin! So I keep it on a paper towel. 
  3. Aloe stores well at room temp! You can pull a leaf off, and leave it by your sink to apply any time you need it! (An aloe leaf will just sit there and dry up rather than rot. Cool, huh?!) Just don’t forget to leave it on something that won’t stain!

Application is easy- just remove a leaf, break it open, and apply the gel found inside. Some leaves are thicker than others, so the gel is trapped in a matrix that has to be crushed first. It’s easiest to do that by hand (or just open up the leaf carefully so you don’t get cut by the THORNS!, and spread it on), but if you are preparing something like a mouthwash for oral ulcers, putting the gel in the blender (especially if you are using several leaves worth of gel matrix) may be easier. The matrix is as effective as the gel alone, so don’t think you have to strip out the gel.

Replanting:

If you have followed care instructions carefully, by year 3, your plant will have all kinds of babies and be root bound. (Aloes reproduce by rhizomes, so you can get literally hundreds of plants from a parent!) You will need to replant it. It is easy to re-pot an aloe. Just pluck the lower leaves until you have a bare stalk, and you can cut off or break the stem, and re-root it in water. That allows you to replant the parent plant and straighten or shorten it. For the babies, if you wait until the soil is VERY dry, make sure it is big enough to have a stalk, and then most of the time you can just pull them straight out of the pot and replant immediately with the roots that come out with them. Use potting soil that will dry out, and replant in summer so it can get the benefits of the SUNBURN. It LOOKS BAD (as in, you’ll think you’ve killed it bad, BUT FEAR NOT, it will recover in about a month and grow like CRAZY), but will give your plant the nourishment it needs to hold it all winter long, even if it doesn’t get much sun. Always fertilize when you repot, or every 6-12 months if it is root bound. Otherwise, aloes are completely self-sustaining. THE LESS CARE YOU GIVE THEM THE BETTER OFF THEY WILL BE!! RESIST THE URGE TO OVER-WATER!!!! YOU WILL MAKE IT ROT!!!! IT IS A CACTUS FIRST AND FOREMOST!!!

FYI- when you put your aloe in the sun in the summer after being inside all winter, it will SUNBURN JUST LIKE AN ALBINO!!!!! It will look HORRIBLE for a month or 2– brown and even splotchy! DON’T OVER-WATER IT TRYING TO RESCUE IT!! It’s a natural renewal, and it WILL RECOVER! Just give it time…

Aloe plants after a winter indoors.

These are ready to be separated and repotted.

Repotted aloe after 2-3 weeks in the sun with a temperature range of 75-90 degrees.

This is how a SUNBURNED aloe is SUPPOSED  to look. Note how the center leaves are starting to green up.