STORM2K

I have an aloe vera plant in my backyard that is croaking and I don't know what is wrong with it. The tips of the individual leaves are turning brown, but the rest of the plant looks fine. I'll try to get a pic up today but my host is very low on space. Any ideas?

Josh - that almost sounds as if the plants are getting too much water - but you haven't really had that much rain have you? I really don't know for sure what the problem is with them, but that's just my guess!

Joshua - I am having the same problem with my aloe vera plants too. Does it mean we aren't watering them enough or too much water?

Thanks,
Patricia

It hasn't rained here in almost 3 weeks. I could use my soil tester on it and see what the results are.

I didn't think you did have any rain. Have you tried to look up any gardening web links? Good luck with it!

No I haven't tried that, but it sounds like a good idea - thought I'd use the new forum first.

OK I ran a small soil test on the soil in that pot and I found that the soil is very moist (it showed a 10/10) deep down, and the pH is an 8, which is slightly alkaline. So I bet it's the high moisture content (related to my cool weather of late) that's been doing it.

Could be Josh - but I would look into a garden webpage just to be sure. I'd hate to say that that is what is the problem and find out I'm wrong! aloes are great plants.

OK, what are some pages that you would recommend? I'm not familiar with any.

(btw I'll get to them later, I'm off to work in a few)

Dry diy.net.

They have some good information on gardening.

You can go to

http://www.gardenweb.com/

They have a lot of forums and one is catcus and succulents. You could try there.

Debbie

OK, I'll bookmark those pages right now. Thanks for the info.

Quick note - http://www.diy.com/ gives me a B&Q site and http://www.diy.net/ returns an error.

This is one of the replies from http://www.gardenweb.com that's related to aloes turning brown;

RE: Aloe turning brown, what's up with that?
Posted by: Jeffrey_harris San Diego, CA (My Page) on Tue, Apr 15, 03 at 22:04

Less light = greener
More light = more colorful (i.e. less green)
Most aloe problems can be traced back to roots, or a lack thereof. This usually is caused by not-porous-enough soil. You need to increase the drainange in your soil. Many aloes also don't like to be cold and wet. Other than that, they're fairly trouble-free plants.

Have you looked at the Aloe portion of the FAQ? Some aloe lunatic jotted down a bit of information that can be quite useful.

It's looks like a neat website. Thanks for sharing Deb!

No I didn't but thanks for telling me about that!

Josh, that aloe vera just needs to be watered about once
a week. All of the old housewives use them, here, and,
they're great to have in the kitchen area, in case you get
a burn - break a piece of it off, rub it on the burn, and,
it won't blister! Good old-fashioned medicine plant!

Aloes also help keep scarring down to a minimum when injured . I injured my right leg when I fell thru a rotted porch board over at my grandmother's house quite a few years ago. I narrowly missed tearing my thigh open on a nail but had lots of scrapes and bruises. My uncle who was there ran and cut an aloe leaf that was as big as my hand and split it open to reveal the gel and said put this on your thigh. It helped to relieve the pain and kept the wounds moist so scabs were soft and flexible. As a result of this, I have very few scars and the ones I do have are very faint.