Aloaceae

[GreekDesert]

Two cultivated Aloe bainesii

[Gee.S]

Nice! I've tried Aloes here, and killed em all except for one A. ferox. Here is my Aloe collection.

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[GreekDesert]

One year i have lost most of my aloes but Aloe ferox survived. I try to find pics soon.

Here is a young Aloe dichtoma

[mcvansoest]

Hi Greekdesert, those are some very nice aloes!

Hi Ron: probably gave them too much sun and tried not quite the right type of aloes - many are really hard to keep alive or grow at all here, of course many others do OK. I killed the first few I tried quite spectacularly, but am slowly getting the hang of keeping them alive - Lots of shade and withholding water right when you think they need it - especially during the monsoon months when there are nights here in the Phoenix heat island when the T stays above 90F for days at a time.

I was going to attach a picture of the pride of my Aloe collection, a now ~10-12 feet tall Aloe 'Hercules', but I ran into the picture is too large (>3000x3000 pixels - which it is) message, but I am about to head to work and do not have the time to covert it down, so I will try when I get back.

All the best,

Thijs

PS Ron the agave pups you gave me a while back are doing well!

[Gee.S]

Hey there Thijs --

I killed an A. marlothii from summer water (presumably) -- everything here is on drip set to the tune of Agaves, and a couple A. 'Blue Elf's got mowed down by rabbits or wood rats. I can't recall my other kills but there were definitely more. And shady spots are at a premium here, I don't have enough for my Agaves as it is. The reason my A. ferox is hanging on is that it's out in full sun on a slope, so the summer watering doesn't keep it wet for long enough to kill it. It burned pretty good its first summer here, but has since adapted to our brutal sun. All in all, it's looking OK, but probably isn't growing as fast as it might under the care of someone competent.

[Geoff]

wow... not easy aloe to kill. Not sure summer water is the problem ( I watered mine in summer and I see them doing it at the Huntington all the time). But they do not like clay soils and will rot the roots if too wet. But usually they just fall over... often will reroot if given the chance... was this a really young plant?

[Gee.S]

Pretty young -- about 5-gal sized. It rotted not at, but near the base, and I tossed it.

[GreekDesert]

[quote="mcvansoest"]Hi Greekdesert, those are some very nice aloes!

Hi Thijs, thanks.
Only the toughest survived a particularly cold winter. Here
one of my other few Aloes, Aloe rupestris.

[mcvansoest]

Greekdesert that is another nice one.

Geoff, in my case I have a pretty strong correlation between Aloes rotting, high (90+F) nighttime temperatures, and watering or recent watering. It got one of my two dichotomas last August. I think I caught it in time and I am trying to reroot the top 1.5 foot that is left after I had to cut the rotting lower 2 feet off. I try to be incredibly careful with watering in those months, but the monsoon rains have been unpredictable and when they happen it is either almost nothing or a 2"/hour deluge, so some watering has to happen. It ended an A. chabaudi (still regret that one), a bunch of noid spotted/speckled ones that had pretty flowers, but I am learning, aside from one Ferox and the hopefully salvageable dichotoma, last year I gained many more aloes in the ground then I lost!

Ron, I have a pretty sorry looking A. Ferox (the lone survivor of three plants that I started out with), but I think it is improving. I have had a lot of success with a bunch of noid hybrids that I scavenged from the Desert Botanical Garden, and of course Aloe Vera, I am of course blessed/cursed with 3 rapidly growing Desert Museum Palo Verdes that provide ample (too much for many of my cacti) shade in the front yard, so I have many good spots for aloes (and agaves).

I have another couple of aloes which I would like some of the Aloe experts to have a look at, they are growing well and flowering. They were sold to me as A. marlothi, but the flowers do not match, so Ferox you would say, and the flowers look right, given some color variation, but the leaves are not quite right, they curl very far back (arborescens like - so I was guessing a natural hybrid of ferox and arborescens, which I saw a picture of in the 'Guide to the Aloes of South Africa', that looked pretty much spot on). One looks like it is starting to form a trunk while the other is offsetting. Now that I have found an easy image resizer, I will try to get those pictures resized and posted.

Here is my Hercules, It withstood last January's freeze with just minor leaf tip damage and I am hoping for flowers/branching, but I will be patient… it gets a lot of verbal encouragement when I am in the front yard. The neighbors probably think I am crazy talking to plants all the time

Aloe Hercules in Mesa Arizona

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[Gee.S]

That is really nice! You should add that baby to the Gallery!

What should I do to encourage my little Aloe to grow faster? Water more often this time of year, maybe even fertilize? The white leaves on my plant are from sunburn when I first planted it three years ago, so you can see it has grown, but so much...

[mcvansoest]

The 'Hercules' does not need much encouragement to grow - hybrid vigor - several feet a year! My Ferox is not a fast grower though, I have wondered about watering it more in the winter, especially since it has been dry, but have kept it on the same about 3 times/2 months that all the other potted plants are on.

I do fertilize the Aloes, but not very often and not very much - usually late fall and late winter/early spring - hoping to encourage flowering. I have watered the plants in the ground once since we had the big rainstorm in November that dropped about 1.5-2" of rain in 24 hours, so that is well over a month and a half ago. The potted plants have gotten water more often. I have flowers coming in in many of the aloes in the ground, should be a nice late winter/early spring, but it has been a dry Fall/Winter so far.

I will post my noid aloe in a new thread.

[Gee.S]

I doubt Hercules would survive out here. Our temps aren't really much different from yours until one of those gawd awful arctic air masses moves in. You're warmed by all the concrete and pavement at night, while we drop like a rock. Believe me, it ain't pretty..... No probs for the ferox tho...

[mcvansoest]

Yeah you get colder a lot more than we do, but we got to low 20s last January for that 3-5 day freeze. It had the classic delayed response not until about 2 weeks after did the leaf tips show they had not been very happy. It is too big to cover now, so it will have to deal, I figure it is big enough now that it will have to be a pretty serious freeze period to kill, damage maybe, but it is well established now.