If you have been keeping up with our recent talks, you know we have been doing a series on How to start a more self-sufficient lifestyle and how to start a self-sufficient food supply. 

In keeping with this theme, today we want to talk about a wonderful plant, the aloe, and how to easily grow your own.

Aloe is common, household plant in many places. The aloe is easy to grow, stays green all year long is just plain cute. We have always had a couple of aloe plants here on the farm, just because we like them. But also, anytime there is a burn or a scrape, you can break off an aloe limb and apply the natural gel to the injury for quick relief. The aloe plant has many medical uses as well as beauty products used.

Growing and using aloe vera in your home can be a great way to start your DIY projects and another small step toward self-sufficiency.

We have another talk on using your aloe plants for DIY recipes. Today we will focus on the easy steps to growing your own aloe plant.

Step one, growing your own aloe. You will, of course, need to start with an aloe plant. There are several different kinds of aloe and each one has slightly different requirements but all aloe are similar in growing needs.

You can buy small aloe plants at most any plant nursery, garden center, Lowe’s, home depot, Wal-Mart, and sometimes at your local grocery store. You can also find them at many flea markets as they are so easy to grow people generally have plenty of them. If you have a friend or neighbor that has an adult aloe you can ask them to save you a baby or two when they separate theirs next time.

Growing your own aloe plant is easy. The aloe does not require much work. The aloe wants loose dirt, medium sun, maybe a few rocks for decoration, and little water. The main issue with aloe is to not overwater it. If you overwater your aloe, it will rot and die.

As for sun exposure, aloe wants some sun but not full sun. You can gauge the amount of sun you aloe wants by watching the plant. If your aloe starts to burn or dry out, you have it in too much sun and you just need to move it to lower sun exposure. If your aloe plants start to get yellow or pale, it needs more sun. It is best to have your aloe in a window where it gets sun part of the day but not all day. And there you have it, a growth plan for your aloe.

Not only is aloe easy to grow but it is easy to propagate also. Aloe will naturally make baby aloe off the side of adult plants. All you need to do to get more aloe is wait and nature does its’ thing.

We have large aloe that put off babies at least once a year if not twice a year. If your aloe plant is happy and healthy it will produce 15 to 20 baby plants a year. We have had some aloe that put off babies several times a year.

When you have baby aloe you can move them into a pot of their own and they will start their new life as another plant. This is also easy.

All you have to do is carefully dig under the new baby aloe and pull it out of the parent dirt. Be sure to go far enough to get the roots without breaking the roots off.

As you know by now, we like to reuse as much as we can. We save our used coffee filter to plant with. We lay the filters out and let them dry. Then when we need to pot a plant, we place a filter into the bottom of the pot. This not only keeps the dirt from falling out the holes in the bottom of the pot. But the coffee grounds also give the plant nutrition.

Put your new aloe baby in a pot large enough to give it some growing room. Give it good potting soil and water it well.

Note, the larger the pot the less often you will need to re-pot your aloe. The larger adult aloe that we have is in a large pot. This way they have room for themselves and when the pot fills up with babies, we know it is time to move the babies to their own pots.

After the re-potting and first watering, then just watch to see when you need to water again. Put your finger into the dirt about 2 inches, or 2 knuckles in. If the dirt is still damp, do not add water. If the dirt is dry give it some water but again, not too much. You want the dirt to be damp and then almost dry out before you water again.

On occasion, an aloe limb will be broken off unintentionally.

We take that limb and put it in water. Just cut off the dead part of the end and place the open end into the water.

Sometimes this piece will take root and make a new plant of its’ own. It seems some aloe plants just want to live no matter what.

If your aloes are like ours, you may have 10 or more babies per adult aloe. We put each baby into its own pot so they have room to become their own adult aloe.

We give baby aloe out as gifts. Put your baby aloe into a nice decorative pot. You can decorate the pot the aloe is already in with paper, cloth, or ribbon and you have a living gift. You can also let the kids paint aloe pots and give them to Grandparents. You would be surprised the fight a pretty aloe plant will cause as a pink elephant gift at the family Christmas party.

We keep most of our baby aloe to let them grow up into big aloe plants. We have plans to harvest some of our adult aloes to get our own aloe gel. That is another talk on how to use your aloe plants for DIY recipes.

Whether you are wanting to harvest gel for DIY recipes or if you just want to have a beautiful plant, aloe is a great plant to have. The aloe plant is easy to maintain, easy to propagate and harvest is a simple process. Aloe also is good for cleaning the air, adding some color to a room, and livening up a place.

We hope this talk has been enjoyable and has given you some new ideas. Please try growing an aloe plant, you will love the plant whether you do anything with it or not.

Thank you for visiting and please come again for another edition of Out Standing in the Field.