SPOON: Sebastian, Gustav, & friends

[kellan_the_tabby]

[ A hanging pot holds a slightly sparse-looking aloe vera plant. It’s getting plenty of light from the left side, at least. ]

That’s Sebastian!

I’m not usually one for naming my plants, but Sebastian was already named when he came to me a couple of years back at a Newcomers event in Unser Hafen. Apparently someone’s aloe vera was just getting too big, so they divided him up & handed pieces around to anyone who wanted them.

& then apparently this happened a few more times, so now Sebastian lives in a lot of homes throughout the Outlands.

This is hilarious to me, so I was happy to keep the name, & if I pass pieces on to anyone else, I’ll be sure to tell the recipients that these, too, are Sebastian.

& then a few years later at the farmers market I purchased a tiny aloe vera planted in one of those plastic cups you get tiny tomatoes in, thinking, well, now I’ll have two, & also the kid selling them is adorable & totally deserves three bucks for being clever about making a little extra on the side. It was probably a year before I replanted it, but it grew well, easily surviving the time or two it got knocked over by the cats. A few of the bits that got knocked off rerooted, & I figured I’d repot them when I got around to it, & then I’d have a couple spare aloes, which is really never a bad idea.

I finally got around to repotting them a couple months ago, & my friends, it was not a few bits growing in that pot.

It was SIXTEEN bits.

[ A table under a window holds a whole bunch of aloe vera plants, most in cans with the tops cut off, but a few in pots. There are also a couple of cans with the stumps of green onions planted in them. Ten of the aloes are separately potted, & the one planted in old cooking pot has five little stemlets tucked in with it. ]

I do not, obviously, need that many aloe plants. Some of these will be going to other people — I’ll likely bring them along to events & shows this summer. But I’m not giving away aloe plants without naming them, so I’d like to introduce you to Gustav. Would you like some of Gustav? Find me at an event this summer!

Of course adding the second window meant there was MUCH more sunlit space for plants, so now Gustav lives on both sides of my room.

[ Five soda cans, two bean cans, and a former cooking pot now hold thirteen iterations of Gustav. They’re gathered around a green bowl with a bit of water in the bottom, and the whole lot of this is sitting on a table in front of the new window. ]

Here’s the green onions, now growing very well! I need to stick some of that in dinner, is what.

[ A tin can, formerly holding peaches, is now filled with dirt. Four green onions stems are enthusiastically growing in it. ]

& lastly, my rubber plant, currently unnamed, but MUCH happier now that it gets direct sun in the afternoons. For a while there it had lost most of its color (& most of its leaves, alas) but now it’s doing very well.

[ A much bigger purple pot holds a rubber plant; each branch ends with a rosette of pointy-ended, oval leaves, dark green with accents of yellow and orange. ]

The local convenience store & cafe has a BIG spider plant in the lobby, with a whole bunch of babies growing from it. Next time I’m in there I’m gonna see if they’ll let me grab a couple. I can always use more plants!

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Comments

[acelightning73]

My mother had a big aloe vera plant. My son and I were at her house, and he was playing next to the aloe plant. Somehow he broke off one big long leaf. My mother wrapped a damp paper towel around the bottom of the leaf and put aluminum foil around that, and my son put it in his shirt pocket and we took it home. I put it in water until I could go buy a pot and potting soil, and I planted it, and it grew and grew. It was in one of the bigger windows in our house, and it stayed there, and somehow nobody remembered to water it for about a year. Once I realized that, I watered it. It sent up a very tall stem that had some pale flowers near the top. When we moved to another house, the aloe came with us. It got submerged in sewage-contaminated sea water when Superstorm Sandy came four feet up the walls of the ground floor, and the salt killed it.

Most of the time, plants die when they see me coming. I tried to grow hydroponic watercress, but it took weeks for there to be enough to make one meal of stir-fry. And the flood killed that also. My talents are for machines, not plants.

[kellan_the_tabby]

Aloe's pretty damn tenacious, but I'm not surprised Sandy was enough to kill yours. Surviving a year without watering is basically Tuesday for them, though.

[danabren]

That is a very sad story :(

[acelightning73]

Sandy hit pretty hard - I live near the Jersey Shore. The flood came four feet up the walls of my ground floor. It destroyed a bookcase full of cookbooks in my kitchen, and all my kitchen appliances (my landlord had them replaced) and most of my living room furniture, including the baby-grand piano. That was the saddest part. (The furnace is on the second floor, which is weird, but it wasn't affected by the flood. And most of my books, and all our clothes and such, were also on the second floor.)

It was the salt in the sea water that killed the aloe (and the watercress). Watercress is the only vegetable that I don't find too revolting to eat, and I make a lot of stir-fries, so it's easy to mix it in with bits of meat and ginger and soy sauce so I hardly know I'm eating a vegetable. I thought it would be a good idea to try to grow it hydroponically, but it took so long to get a handful of sprigs. I really have no aaffinity with plants (except for my favorite now-legal greenery).

[danabren]

:(

[danabren]

Please tell me your process for planting green onion butts.

[kellan_the_tabby]

stick pinkie in dirt, stick green onion butt in hole, vaguely water

[danabren]

Length of trimmed butt? Like, just the beard? Half an inch above the roots?

[kellan_the_tabby]

wherever you cut it off to use the green part, but at least half an inch above the roots is probably minimum

[danabren]

That there is the important bit :D Merci!

[kellan_the_tabby]

De rien! Bonne chance!

[ryl]

My aloe hasn't made little babies. I think it's because I'm not in a desert and it doesn't know how to deal with the winters on this side of the continent. It's still alive, though, and very useful when I have a cut. Maybe if I named it it would be more prolific.

[kellan_the_tabby]

Mine only did because it got knocked over & some bits fell off, then the bits rerooted. Not sure if that's the preferred method but I've had worse ideas, might be worth trying.

[thewayne]

Very useful having an aloe vera plant around for burns!

[kellan_the_tabby]

SO useful! (Want one? Only I don't think they'd mail well.)

Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith]

That is a lot of aloe veras! I have one with small leaves that I got at a plant swap, and a newer one with bigger leaves.

Re: Wow!

[kellan_the_tabby]

I'd offer you one of Gustav, but I don't think he'd do well in the mail, alas.

Re: Wow!

[ysabetwordsmith]

Actually plants can be mailed. First, you put the plant in a plastic pot with lightweight potting mix. Then you cover the whole pot with plastic wrap. Next, secure it into a box larger than the plant. The best way is to make an insert with styrofoam or cardboard, then tape the pot and insert into the box with packing tape.

I order plants from a handful of nurseries who do a really good job of packing. Another version uses a custom-made plastic lid or clamshell case for the pot and plant, but that's not something that most folks have. Cardboard, foam, tape, etc. are easy to source.

Just in case you ever need to know how to ship a plant, I'm not wheedling.

Re: Wow!

[kellan_the_tabby]

All of that said, if I'm ever driving cross country anywhere near y'all with spare aloes happening, I'll totally stop by to drop one off.