About a week before you plan to set the seedlings into the garden, place them in a protected spot outdoors (partly shaded, out of the wind) for a few hours, bringing them in at night. You’ve been coddling these seedlings for weeks, so they need a gradual transition to the great outdoors. It’s not a good idea to move your seedlings directly from the protected environment of your home into the garden. As the seedlings grow taller, raise the lights. Keep in mind that seedlings need darkness, too, so they can rest. If you’re growing under lights, adjust them so they’re just a few inches above the tops of the seedlings. Rotate the pots regularly to keep plants from leaning into the light. If you’re growing in a window, choose a south-facing exposure. Set the lights on a timer for 15 hours a day. Remember to feed the seedlings regularly with liquid fertilizer. Let the soil dry slightly between waterings. When you see the first signs of green, you have to remove the cover.Īs the seedlings grow up, you have to keep the soil moist but not soggy. This helps keep the seeds moist before they germinate. To speed up germination, cover the pots with wet paper or a plastic dome. After planting seeds, you have to moisten the newly planted seeds. Some of the small ones can be sprinkled right on the soil surface. Start with a fresh, sterile mix that will ensure healthy, disease-free seedlings. NOTE: Do not use soil from your garden or re-use potting soil from your houseplants. If you love to DIY by yourself, you might start growing seedlings in yogurt cups, milk cartons or even a paper cup.Ĭhoose the potting soil that’s made for growing seedlings. In the meantime, it is a comfort to have Mitch’s portrait of the mythic Spiral Aloe.You can start seeds in almost any type of container, as long as it’s at least 2-3 ” deep and has some drainage holes. I’m just not ready yet to try again, which must be a great relief to the spiral aloes of the world. (I wrote about one such attempt here.) It seemed only right to pass up the aloes for sale in very affordable one-gallons at Terra Sol Nursery in Santa Barbara recently, where the above photo was taken. In my opinion, causing the death of a spiral aloe under your care ranks up there as one of horticulture’s biggest heartaches. Do not, as I have done, treat it as a dry-garden aloe. It’s the one I should have taken when I visited but was too overwhelmed to lift a camera.Īloe polyphylla’s home is a high rainfall area in the Drakensberg Mountains of South Africa. There are Pinterest boards devoted to Things that Spiral, which is where I found this photo of the spiral staircase at Kew Gardens. We crave them in our gardens and co-opt them in our buildings. Whether spiraling aloes or nautilus shells, these patterns repeat over and over.
The study of the recurring forms in nature, or sacred geometry, tends to attract some New Agey theories and followers, but the Vetruvian numbers don’t lie. It’s about 34″ diameter now.”Īnd a wider shot of Dave’s slice of urban horticultural heaven in the Lower Haight, San Francisco. I thought you’d like to see a recent picture of it, three years later and still getting bigger. “ I came across your Bloom Day July 2012 posting and saw a photo of my Aloe polyphylla at the bottom. He sent me these photos to show the progress his aloe has made since I photographed it in July 2012: Dave’s spiral aloe is sporting some fine sacred geometry.
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