I have a three year old aloe plant named Trey. He is quite lovely and big, and currently lives in my living room. He has a grow light and his own special spot on the table, which is all well and good, but I really want to move him into my bedroom, where I could plug in his grow light, put him by a window, and play classical music for him whenever I am out.
The thing I am afraid of is this: I have a window unit air conditioner, and everynight I turn it down to 62 degrees. I shut my door, so it gets pretty nippy. I am worried that Trey would get chilled at night, and all the good done by the window and the grow light and Beethhoven would be undone by his getting cold every night.
So, of course, my question is: can aloe plants deal with cold like that? Would he be ok with the changes in temperature, or should I leave him where it doesnt get as cold, and just turn up the music really loud?
I just love that you have an aloe plant named Trey!
I have one too, though he doesn’t have a name. He is close to a window and goes through fairly extreme temperature fluctuations without apparent harm. He is about two years old and thriving. He listens to an eclectic variety of music; classical, jazz, goth…enjoys it all, too.
Deserts where aloes grow have widely varying temperatures…it can be over 100 in daytime, and below 50 that night. Why don’t you move him & if he seems a bit stressed, you can put him back? Most succulents are quite hardy.
I have more than one aloe plant. I did not plan to have more than one, but this sucker is so hardy and fruitfull that it can’t be helped.
This plant stays inside my bedroom window winter, spring, summer and fall. My aloe does not care whether it it hot or cold. It does not care whether it gets watered or not for months at a time. It does not care if I snip leaves off to squeeze it’s stinky juices on the sunburn on my face.
I have come to the conclusion that it is indistructable. Not only will it not die, it keeps making little baby aloe plants. Out of the dozens I’ve given away over the last 3 years the only one that died was attacked by the family dog and ripped to shreds.
My answer to your question, in short, is that aloe plants cannot die no matter what you do to them.
I can kill a SILK plant. Wife and I got a beautiful aloe plant as a housewarming years ago. Followed the directions to the letter. It was dead within 3 months. Tried it again a couple years later. Dead within 3 months. I just got one a couple weeks ago for my office. It’s not looking too good. I named it Kenny cuz I’m a bastard. The only plant I haven’t managed to destroy by a sly glance from across the room is a Dieffen Bachia. It was given to me when it was a foot high and had two leaves. Six months later it is now over four feet high and the only thing it has ever had put in it’s pot is yesterday’s coffee. If I can grow this thing, you folks can probably get it to produce cheeseburgers as fruit.
Oh, Joy! Now Trey and I can sleep in the same room like we did in the olden days!
Thank you Carina42 and Biggirl (and, I guess, Turbo Dog, even if you were kind of the voice of doom). Say hi to all your aloe plants for me,
love
Sneeze
Aloes, like many subtropical succulents, will tolerate low temperatures better if they are kept dry at the roots; failure of such plants outdoors in northern regions is nearly always caused by the combination of cold/damp rather than the cold alone.
Make sure that the soil in the pot is gritty and free-draining, if you have a saucer underneath the pot, make sure you empty any excess water from it (never leave the plant standing in water)
Yeah you can. Just kept the soil in the pot sopping wet all the time (i.e. over water it). Overwatering will kill just about any plant, save aquatic vegetation.
This seemed like the perfect place to post my query, hope you guys don’t mind.
We had a beautiful aloe plant (no name or gender decided) that grew very well…we were so proud.
But then my mother put liquid fertilizer in it to “nurse it along”…and, well, we still don’t know what happened.
The plant is now a strange tumbleweed brown shade with hints of green. When we attempted to use the leaves for burns as we always have before, the liquid from the inside gel stung and turned a light, sickly brown on our flesh. The liquid also seems to refuse to heal skin any longer.
Help? The aloe still lives, though still looking sick.
Um, I don’t know quite how to break this to you, but if you can overcome your embarrasment and study the aloe’s sexual organs, you’ll find that they are Hermaphrodites (Dioecious).
I feel that you should come to terms with this but still love and support them.
The brown stuff in the leaves is the phosphorus inside the leaves. Coming from the fertalizer.
Ill dowse my aloe with fert. every now and then, and get the same results. the color will disappear as the plant uses up the fert.
If its been an extrenely long time and its still colored, give the plant regular water feedings to flush its system. you could do this after a long period of no water so it sucks up the fresh water.
[nitpick]
Mange, a hermaphroditic plant is actually monoecious. Dioecious species have separate male and female plants.
I used to get them confused too, until I learned that root for these words means house. Thus, monoecious = two sexes in one house, dioecious = separate houses.
[/nitpick]
The aloe still lives, though still looking sick.