Hello All,

This aloe started to curl about a month ago, not as bad as it is now. When it first started curling I thought it was the stress of blooming so much. At that point it had been blooming non-stop for a 2 months. It is still blooming. It has had at least a dozen inflorescence in bloom in the last 3 months.

But, Baja has told me before my aloes curl because of water stress, lack there of. It gets watered, because it is dry, every 2-3 days. I am starting to think it is water stress is because the roots are pot-bound and the plant is overcrowded. It can't go in a larger pot, so it has to get divided.

In the last month I have had another aloe, 'White Beauty', acting the same way. It was also very crowded. I divided it yesterday and noticed a mass of roots in the pot. As many roots, or more roots than there was soil. So that makes me think that this one is also probably more roots than soil at this pot as well. Is it is possible that may be the reason for the excess curling?

The first picture is what it looked like back in November when it started to bloom. You can see it on the left side of the picture. It looked really nice. It has grown a lot in a those four months. Hard to imagine it is the same plant.

Your Aloe is very pretty @Cullen, it look a bit crowded there, I think it would be a good idea to separate them and let them have more room to grow.

I think you have reasoned yourself to the answer already: more roots than soil, so probably very little water retention thus less water for the roots to take up... thus water stress. I see that with many of my plants - if I leave them root bound too long (intentionally or unintentionally) they eventually start to decline.

Two things seem to drive the need for bigger pots (or thinning out, as the case may be), resulting in a bit of a curl. One is an outright shortage of space (judge the root mass relative to the leaf mass). The other is a limited holding capacity in the medium (volume of water the soil holds). In some sense the plant becomes unable to drink deeply (fully quench its thirst) when there isn't enough water available in the soil, relative to the succulence it must sustain above ground.

I divide most of my clumping aloes as necessary, maybe every 2-3 years, so that I don't have to keep upping the pot size. They tend to rejuvenate significantly when I do this, maybe also because they're getting fresh soil.