Aloe Vera Care Through the Year: A Growing Season and a Dry Rest

The year in one table

Aloe asks for very little, and most of what it does ask for is timing rather than effort. The whole year comes down to turning the watering up in spring, turning it down in autumn, and doing everything disruptive in between. Getting those two switches at the right moment is most of the skill in growing this plant well.

Spring: everything disruptive happens now

Wait for evidence before you change anything. A plant that has been dry all winter looks slightly shrunken and it is tempting to soak it as soon as the days lengthen, but the trigger to watch for is a small new leaf pushing up from the center of the rosette. That means the roots are working again and can use what you give them.

Once it is growing, this is the window for everything that involves cutting or disturbance: repotting, separating pups, beheading a leggy plant. Cut surfaces seal quickly in warmth and the plant has a full season ahead to recover. The same operations in autumn leave open wounds going into the cold.

1. Water once, thoroughly, when the first new leaf appears Soak until it runs from the bottom, then let the pot dry completely before the next one. Do not go straight to a summer routine.
2. Repot and take pups in the same session The plant is out of the pot anyway, so do both at once rather than disturbing it twice in one season.
3. Feed once at half strength A dilute balanced or cactus feed once now is plenty. Aloe grown hard and lean has far better leaves than aloe grown fat.
4. Increase the light before the sun strengthens Move it to its brightest position now, while the sun is still weak, so it acclimatizes gradually instead of scorching in early summer.

Summer: the growing season, and the one real risk

This is when the plant does nearly all its growing, and when a spell outdoors pays off most. Full sun and moving air give short, thick, hard leaves and often a bronze or reddish cast at the edges. A plant that spends every summer indoors is always softer than one that goes out.

The risk is not heat and it is not drought, both of which aloe handles easily. It is water sitting in the compost during a wet spell, and it is scorch from moving a plant into full sun too fast. Keep the pot under cover so prolonged rain cannot reach it, and take two weeks over the move outdoors.

In real heat above about 95F (35C) an aloe stops growing and effectively rests, in the same way it does in winter. Do not increase the watering to compensate; a dormant plant in wet compost rots just as readily at the height of summer as in the depths of winter.

Autumn: start the taper early

The single most common way aloes are lost is a normal summer watering given a few weeks too late in the year. Compost that is still wet when the nights turn cold is exactly the combination that rots the roots, and the plant will not show you the damage for another fortnight.

So begin stretching the intervals as soon as nights start to cool, rather than waiting for a date or for the plant to look different. Bring anything that has been outdoors back in before nights drop below about 50F (10C), and stop feeding completely.

1. Lengthen each interval as the nights cool Go from roughly weekly to fortnightly, then to every three weeks, over the course of the season. Always check with a skewer rather than the calendar.
2. Inspect before bringing plants indoors Check the leaf bases, the crown and the underside of the pot for mealybugs and scale. Pests brought in now spread through the house over winter.
3. Move it off a cold windowsill at night The gap between curtain and glass can be far colder than the room. Move the plant into the room after dark, or stand it on an insulating mat.
4. Stop feeding entirely Feeding into autumn produces soft growth that goes into winter unripened, and soft growth is what rots first.

Winter: bright, cool and dry

Aloe rests in winter. It needs light, because a plant in a dark corner stretches even while it is barely growing, and it needs to stay above 50F (10C), but it wants almost nothing to drink. In a cool room you can go the entire season without watering; in a heated room every three or four weeks is plenty, and only when the compost is bone dry to the bottom.

Some wrinkling of the leaves by late winter is normal and completely reverses within days of the first spring watering. Watering because of that wrinkling, in a cold room, is how most aloes are lost. Do not repot, do not cut, do not feed and do not take pups until the days lengthen.

If a room genuinely drops near 41F (5C), move the plant rather than trying to compensate in any other way. Nothing else you do makes a cold room safe for an aloe.

Keeping a record that is worth having

Two or three lines a season is enough, and it turns the guesswork above into your own numbers. Note the date of the first new leaf in spring, the date of each watering with how many days the compost took to dry afterwards, the date you last watered before autumn, and the date you brought the plant indoors.

After one full year those figures give you something no general guide can: the drying time of your own pot in your own room in each season. After two years you can see whether a problem repeats, and a repeating problem with a date attached is one you can prevent rather than react to.