Aloe vera plant is very sensitive to full sun and excessive water. It becomes unwell if you provide excessive full sun and overwater.
Sunburn and overwatering are very common mistakes with aloe vera plants whether you're growing them in pots or ground. Indoor and outdoors, watering matters more than sunlight.
Let's see how overwatering impacts the aloe plant and what you can do to recover your plants in pots. Also, how to save them for the future to avoid these common mistakes.
Care and recovery of overwatered aloe vera
More than anything, if you keep your aloe plants in less privileged conditions, your plants will be happy and healthy.
Let's discuss some early and later signs of overwatered aloe vera plants.
Signs of overwatered aloe plants
- Color change
The first early sign of overwatered aloe plants is the changing color of aloe plant leaves. Leaves start changing color into yellowish and lighter shades of green color.
If your plant sticks to the light green color, it may be a reason that the plant condition is stable for now, and overwatered is drained.
Otherwise, it'll get worse and worse.
- Unwell growth
Overwatering somewhere restricts the overall growth of aloe plants. You will see shorter leaves, growth restrictions, and a short plant with tiny leaves at the end of the cycle.
Overwatering imposes extra pressure on plants that's why aloe plants stop accepting more to grow up.
- Odor and melting leaves
When aloe plants get overwatered for a long time, it's very visible that leaves become greasy and melt in some cases.
An unusual odour comes from the leaves which is completely bad for the aloe plant growth like it's rotten.
Why do plants get affected by overwater?
A very simple answer is the plants' nature and growing conditions. Aloe plants don't like excessive water for a long time or even regular watering if you don't have drainage in pots.
Overwatering also affects aloe plants in different weather and seasons. In the cold season, if you overwater aloe plants, it'll completely ruin the aloe plants growth.
Where, in summer, more water can affect the growth of aloe plants but not every time.
Still, overwatering in any season is not good and you should avoid it whether you're growing them in pots or in the ground.
How to recover aloe plants from overwatering?
So gardeners, let's look at some better ways to recover your overwatered aloe vera plants at home-
- Maintain the drainage
Sometimes, overwatering becomes an issue because of poor drainage in pots. poor drainage in pots becomes a reason to hold more water in pots and then it creates issues for the plant.
To overcome this, improve your pot drainage. For that, use a tool to open the drainage holes and check the water-absorbing rate. If it improves within the next two days then keep it otherwise change the pot.
- Repotting and replantation
Repotting and replantation are required at the stage from where the plant starts to get rotten or unwell or restrict its growth.
To give a boost and independence to grow, you need to re-pot your aloe cuttings and replant them.
Use a sharp knife to cleanly remove the aloe leaves at the bottom and replant the healthy or partially affected leaves in the new pots.
- Sunlight access
Choosing the right place for sunlight access and humidity is very important for overwatered aloe vera plants. Otherwise, the consequences are bad.
So choose a less crowded bright and dry place to keep your aloe vera plants at home.
If sunlight is too intense then keep the shelter. Otherwise, let them grow in healthy light and dry conditions.
- Water scheduling
After plant recovery, you need to reschedule the watering after confirming the fast drainage and sunlight place.
Keep watering your aloe plants whenever you feel the soil is dry. just check with your fingers and water.
Don't water too much or too less. Just one inch of water to keep them healthy.
Note: If you are growing them in bottles or too restricted pot, then you should change them and keep the pot bigger for expansion of the plant.
Difference between Pots aloe plants and open field aloe plants overwatering
- In pots, you can easily handle the overwatering issue because of limited space and minor issues. Easy to save plants.
- In open fields, you can face multiple issues with soil and it will create huge trouble if you don't know a proper reason. It may consume more time than your expectations.
- The chances of recovering aloe vera plants are high if you work on each plant in particular.
- Sometimes people use plastic bottles, cement pots, and metal pots, for aloe plants. It's way too easy to drain excess water just by opening holes.
- In the case of ground soil, drainage isn't easy if your soil is compacted and having trouble absorbing water. you can't do it fast if intense sunlight isn't available. Only manual soaking of water can troubleshoot.
- Some people use pumps, clothes, and extra soil to drain such areas. But an effective way is to aerate the soil.