Aloe Vera Care Guide – Uplifers

Aloe vera, known for its lanceolate leaves with scalloped edges, is a great plant to grow indoors. Aloe vera, which can be used for a variety of purposes from home air purification to skin care, requires little maintenance, so even people with no plant care experience can easily take care of aloe vera.

As a rule, bright lighting is sufficient for good aloe vera care. Problems that come with caring for aloe vera that don’t want to water too much are usually over-watering the plant and not getting enough sunlight. When caring for aloe vera, there is nothing to consider other than sunlight and watering. You can read everything you want to know about aloe vera and the tricks to look out for when caring for aloe vera in this article.

What is Aloe Vera?

Aloe vera is one of the most popular indoor plants. More than 300 types of aloe vera have fleshy, lanceolate-shaped leaves with serrated edges. Aloe vera, when grown in the right conditions, produces yellow, red, or orange flowers at the tips of the leaves. However, young plants often do not flower, and houseplants can take years to flower.

Aloe vera, which is a fast growing type of succulent, takes about 3-4 years to mature and produces offspring when mature. You can use your aloe vera puppies to propagate the plant in other pots or give them to your friends. The general characteristics of aloe vera are as follows:

• botanical name: Aloe barbadensis miller
• Family: asparagus
• Type: succulent, succulent, perennial
• Dimensions achieved in adulthood: 30-90 cm high, 15-30 cm wide
• Solar request: complete, partial
• Soil request: Sandy
• soil pH: sour
• Flowering period: Summer
• flower color: yellow, red, orange
• Source: Africa
• Toxicity: It is toxic to humans and pets.

How to care for aloe vera?

Aloe vera is one of the easiest indoor plants to care for because it is hardy and drought tolerant. To create the right conditions for aloe vera, paying attention to sunlight and water is usually sufficient. Points to pay attention to when growing aloe vera indoors are as follows:

easy request

Aloe vera needs about 6 hours of sunlight per day to be healthy and grow. For this reason, you can place your plant on a bright and sunny windowsill. However, you must be careful that the sun’s rays do not fall directly on the aloe vera. Burns can occur on the leaves of plants that are exposed to direct sunlight. Weakness and wrinkles can occur on the leaves of plants that do not receive enough sunlight.

soil request

Another important aspect of aloe vera care is well-draining soil. In its natural environment, aloe vera usually grows in nutrient-poor, sandy soil. Therefore, you can mix perlite and sand with cactus soil to create the right environment for your aloe vera. Aloe vera, which loves slightly acidic soils due to soil pH, can also grow in neutral or alkaline soils.

water request

Aloe vera does not require abundant watering. For this reason, it will be enough to water the plant when the soil is completely dry. However, if the soil is left without water for too long, aloe vera leaves can become wrinkled. Although aloe vera usually recovers when irrigated after a drought, aloe vera left without water for a long time or given too much water can turn yellow and even die due to stress. Since aloe vera only needs water during the growing season, you may not want to water the plant at all during the winter months.

temperature request

Since the natural habitat of aloe vera is a subtropical and humid climate, the ideal temperature for the plant to grow is usually between 12-30°C. If the temperature drops too much, aloe vera leaves may turn yellow or shrivel. For this reason, care should be taken not to expose the plant to sudden changes in temperature. Since aloe vera does not like sudden changes in temperature, as well as wind, it is important that you do not place your plant near windows and doors that are constantly opening and closing.

moisture requirement

Aloe vera doesn’t necessarily need a moist environment to grow. For aloe vera, an ambient humidity of about 40 percent is usually sufficient.

request for fertilizer

Aloe vera does not need fertilizer as it grows in nutrient-poor soils. However, you can encourage its growth by fertilizing aloe vera once a year in the spring. To do this, you can use fertilizer 10-40-10, diluting it in half.

How to cut aloe vera?

In addition to being a beautiful plant to decorate, aloe vera also provides health benefits thanks to the gel in its leaves. It is believed that aloe vera gel can speed up the healing process of burns and wounds. If you are growing aloe vera at home, you can remove the gel and use it after trimming your plant’s leaves.

To benefit from the juice of an aloe vera plant, select the leaf of the plant next to the stem. Then cut it as close to the stem as possible. After that, you can apply water from the cut area to wounds and burns.

Even if you won’t be using aloe vera juice, you can prune it regularly to support plant growth. To do this, you can cut off the ends of the leaves, which look brown and lifeless, or you can cut them off from below.

How to propagate aloe vera?

You can use the offspring at the very bottom of the plant to propagate aloe vera. Plants that have reached maturity usually produce a large number of offspring. You can propagate aloe vera using the offspring of the plant as follows:

• Put on your gloves and fill the new pot you’ll be growing your aloe vera in with soil.
• Find offspring on the lowest part of the old plant. Pick up the fry with a trowel and cut off the root that attaches the fry to the plant.
• We dry the puppy horizontally on a sunny windowsill for several days.
• Plant the baby in a pot so that it completely covers the root part.
• Water the plant and place the pot on a sunny windowsill.

Be patient as the roots of the plant can take 3-4 months to grow.

When to change aloe vera pots?

Aloe vera has a shallow and wide root system that loves to spread over the surface of the soil. For this reason, it can be beneficial to switch to a new pot as the plant grows.

You can repot as soon as the aloe vera has taken root or the puppies start to look crowded. To do this, remove the mother plant and offspring from the pot, being careful not to damage the leaves. Then you can cut the fry and after a few days of drying, move them to new pots.

When transplanting a mother plant, first fill the pot with cactus soil. Then place the mother plant in the pot and add soil so it doesn’t rise too high. Water the plant well and let the soil dry completely before watering again.

How does aloe vera bloom?

Aloe vera flowers are shaped like red flowers that bloom on top of the leaves. Because aloe vera is difficult to flower, even mature plants may have difficulty flowering. In order to encourage aloe vera to bloom, it is necessary to create a natural desert environment. To do this, expose the plant to bright sunlight and high temperatures. However, even if you have created the right conditions for aloe vera to bloom, your plant may not bloom for years, or it may only bloom once a year.

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