Harvest & Replanting Aloe Vera

 Hello friends,

Today I harvested some aloe vera and replanted the overgrown container.  My aloe vera plant is over 45 years old. My Mother-in-law gave me a pup in the 1970's. It has been divided many times.  I move it indoors for the Winter and keep it outside Spring through frost.  Frost is coming very soon, time to start prepping the gardens for Winter.

Here was the plant this Spring, I should have taken a photo before I removed it from the pot, it has grown significantly throughout the ideal Summer months. It was huge, almost 6 feet across.  I could barely lift it.

The plant was root bound, I had to hack away at the roots to get it out of the pot but these plants are tough and can handle rough treatment.  I wanted to harvest some leaves for my products and to remove any that were partially cut, used or generally scarred. 

 Healthy root system, time to repot.

Peel off the leaf rather than cut it. Once you do it you will see how easy this comes off and leaves a nice clean stem. When you repot, set the plant so all of that exposed stem is covered with soil and it will develop roots from the newly harvested areas creating a strong healthy plant. This method is the best practice rather than cutting.

I save any of the off shoot pups to replant, there were about a dozen of them. 

 

When you harvest the leaves the best practice is to gently twist and peel the entire leaf from the stem.  It circles the stem but comes off cleanly.  I took off about 8 pounds of leaves. Note the bottom of the leaves, they aren't cut but removed by simply peeling from the mother plant.  This left about a dozen smaller healthy leaves and a 6 inch newly exposed stem with the root system attached at the bottom.  The newly exposed area will develop new roots resulting in a very strong and healthy plant with many more years of life.

The newly repotted plant - 10 pounds lighter with room to grow!

I use the aloe in my soap, bath and body products so I prepare the harvested leaves ready for use.  I use various methods. After washing the leaves, I peel and extract the pure gel by simply pressing.  The larger leaves have enough pulp to scoop with a spoon and cube. The cubes are the same as the extracted gel/pulp but they are so pretty, like clear crystals, I just enjoy seeing them that way.

Truly beautiful crop, sliced and ready for processing.

Peeling, scooping and extracting the gorgeous gel - such a pretty bowl full.

             

                      The large leaves yield chunky cubes of the pure pulp.

I also process some of the leaves with the green peel.  The food processor works well for this, then they are poured into ice cube trays for a quick freeze for long term storage.

Aloe vera, a wonderful plant that is really easy to grow 

with wonderful properties for skin care.

Thanks for visiting,

Bonnie

The repotting worked well, one year later and time to repot again!