How to Multiply Aloe Vera Plants

Sometimes you have one aloe vera plant and you would like to multiply it. If you nurture and look after that well, you will in time have many offsets, or babies, as I call them. They just spring up in the same pot. Then it is time to spend an hour or two moving them into new individual pots. The more room you give them the larger your plants will grow.

I'm afraid I forgot to take photos of the very full and crowded little pots that I transplanted the other Saturday, but perhaps you can use your imagination as you see those little pots in the photos below, and you see how they multiplied into many larger pots from the originating ones. (For more thoughts on the process see the page on propagation).

I was off to a good start when I remembered that I had promised to take photos this time.

Almost any good sized container will do; I'm using my grandma's old enamel dough-mixing bowl here to prepare my potting soil. I had put in a few spades full of garden dirt, and a couple more of peat moss, and as I happened to have a straw bale on hand, I grabbed a handful of that to mix in too, just to make the pot's soil lighter. It tends to get compacted otherwise.

Here's a couple of the aloe vera plants already pulled up and ready to pot. I just have to stop to scoop my potting soil into a pail or larger container. Notice that the root has some hair-like rootlets on it. That will help ensure the plant is off to a good start.

Notice that little pot in the bottom right? Together with two others the same size, on the oval tray on the right, they were the three pots from which I've pulled all the plants I'm going to transplant today.

More mixing and stiring of my potting mix.

Here I'm tossing in a clump of hard dirt from a pot where the aloe vera froze in the winter. It has to be broken and crumbled up.

I'm remembering to mix in a handful of straw to make the soil less compact over time. (Aloe vera plants don't mind being in dry, compacted soil as they will draw moisture out of the air when needed, but I think they thrive better if the soil has some room to breath).

Okay, I've scooped this 8-litre ice cream pail full of my soil mix, and now, after watering the soil, I use my little spade to wedge a hole big enough to plant the root of one of the aloe vera plants.

Placing the aloe vera plant into the hole, and then I always pat the soil in tight and close around the bottom of the plant. It does not like to have the leaves rest on the damp soil, so if I can get it to stand up by tamping the soil around the root, I try to do that.

I'm not sure this weaker plant looks good enough to get a pot of its own, so I plant it on the side in this pot. If it takes root and perks up, I can always pull it up and move it to a bigger pot by itself.

There! These two aloe vera plants are in a new pot with plenty of room to grow large.

I've lined up today's results from my how to multiply aloe vera session. Besides the larger 8-litre pail with the two plants, there are these five pots up on the shelves in my front porch. Beside you see the three empty pots from which these all came.

But you think that's all? Nope... I've got more aloe vera to multiply!






It was already a full Saturday of work around the house, so I left these plants in these two pots to transplant another time when I have time to mess with the dirt.

"Yes-but--" you may be asking, "how do you get the plants to multiply - have more babies?"

Easy. When you put them in a larger pot, they have room to grow and (now, this is my own theory), when they get dried out and neglected, they begin to shoot up these offsets, or babies all around them in the pot. I imagine them crying out, "Oh-no, we're dying! We've got to leave some decendants behind!"

By this fall of 2008 I expect I may well have enough babies to do this all over again.

Only, I haven't got room in my house for more pots! I'm doing some test mailing of small aloe vera plants to friends, to see how well that works out. If that experiment goes well, I may be offering to sell some, and ship them out.

Let's see how these just multiplied aloe vera plant do over the summer.

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