The Aloe Harvest

Etta processing some of the aloe leaves

Long about September of 2012, Etta and I were given an Aloe vera plant by one of Etta's friends. Aloe is a succulent, which means it has thick, fleshy parts (leaves, in aloe's case) full of water. They tend to come from arid places and need less water that other plants, but there are many examples of succulent plants that evolved in temperate areas of the world, including some sedums. Many succulents reproduce asexually by growing clones of themselves (called "pups" by aloe growers) off of some portion of the stem. Each pup will eventually produce its own roots, remain there after the 'mother' part of the plant dies, and produce its own pups when it gets big enough.

We used it as a Christmas Tree that first year

We're pretty sure the plant we received was an offshoot of an offshoot of a plant Etta's friend Will received when he started college in 2001 or so, and it was a monster. We had to stake it to keep it from leaning over and snapping, and it grew much more quickly than any other potted plant I've ever had.

The open end of the leaf where it was attached to the plant

A couple of weeks ago, I walked into the bedroom to tend the potted plants in the window, and I was surprised to find two pups coming up off of our aloe! Until then, we weren't sure how we'd keep it alive when we harvested the leaves, but we knew we'd have to cut it down soon because of how tall and heavy it was getting. Thankfully, the pups came up just in time, so today we harvested and processed the leaves, and prepared the pups for transplanting.

A cross section of the leaf, showing gel and veins

To get the gooey insides out of each leaf, you basically have to cut off the green parts without taking too much of the gel inside. The green parts of the leaf contain the photosynthesizing cells, a little waste storage, and the waxy cuticle protecting the leaf from direct contact with the environment. Between the outside layers are loads and loads of cortex cells which have relatively huge areas to store water as well as sugars, minerals (vitamins), amino acids, and other chemicals (including salicylic acid, lignins, and saponins). A lot of these chemicals are great for our skin and for our bodies when eaten, which is why aloe has been cultivated for thousands of years. There are also veins (called vascular bundles in botany) running the length of each leaf used to carry water and nutrients up from the roots, and sugars out of the leaf to the rest of the plant.

The author holding a piece of gel.

We started processing each leaf by slicing off the sharp edges. Then, pressing the leaf flat, you can run a sharp knife under the skin of about a third of the convex part of the leaf. Once the first cut is made, it's easy to cut the rest of the skin off the rounded side, leaving the gel attached to the bottom. If you press the leaf very flat, you can then slip the knife under the gel and get most of it off. Inevitably, you cut through some of the cortical cells that store the water and chemicals, so the whole table gets covered in a mucus-y goo. However, it's held together as one unit by the veins and the bonds between the remaining cells. We're going to make the gel into several products for ourselves - skin ointments, conditioners, maybe even slip a little into some food (although it didn't smell terribly appetizing). We're not quite ready to use the gel yet, so we sliced it into chunks and placed it on a cookie tray in the freezer. Once it froze, we broke the chunks apart and stored them in a plastic bag in the freezer, ready to use when we need them.
 
 So what did we do with the pups, and how are we going to keep growing them? Well to start with, I cut the whole big aloe plant off at the soil line. Then, I peeled each leaf off the stem until there were about four left. I read that you can keep the few uppermost leaves and get them to root and keep growing as well. Unfortunately, they snapped off the stem a little too high, so I'm not sure they'll survive, but I'm going to try anyway.

The two pups along with the top of the mother plant, left out to form callouses before transplanting.

Once I was done with that, I carefully wiggled the remaining stem, the roots, and the attached pups out of the soil. The pups were attached to the bottom of the mother's stem by small, underground stems of their own. One of them already has one root coming off of it, while the other does not. To get them to root, first you have to leave them exposed to the air in a dark place for a day or two. In that time, they'll secret some of the chemicals stored in the leaves to form a callous over the wound. Once the callous has formed, you can transplant them without fear that they'll rot. Generally, you don't want to water transplanted succulents until a root system as formed to discourage rot, but you should mist their soil with a little water to encourage them to send roots out. Once they have roots, you can water as normal, which for aloe, is not very often.

We've really enjoyed having this plant; it's very easy to care for and it provides a wonderful material for our health, so we'll be careful to raise the pups to maturity. I'd strongly encourage anyone reading this to get one for their desk or a window sill at home. Check back soon for my upcoming post about jade (another succulent) and the other plants I've got growing in my window!

The Regular Farmer

Spit!

Have you ever been working in a garden, strolling through the woods, or looking at plants in a greenhouse when you noticed what looked like a wad of spit on a leaf or in the crotch of a plant? Perhaps, in a lapse of judgment, you touched the spit and noticed it was both oily and slippery, and kind of sticky at the same time. If you were so brave, and you kept a very sharp eye, you may have seen one of these guys jump or crawl out of the stuff you left on the plant:


Aptly called the "spittlebug", as well as the "froghopper", this insect belongs to the same order as cicadas and aphids. The cute green ones like our friend up there are the nymph of the species, meaning they haven't yet reached sexual maturity, and have to molt one more time before they're adults. You'll only ever find the nymphs in foam - the adults don't usually make foam, although they have the same diet as their younger brethren. They are more often the ones called froghoppers, because they look like really tiny frogs, and because they can jump huge distances. The first time I saw one, it was on a strawberry leaf until I went to catch it and it leapt off. I started hootin' and hollerin' to the rest of the crew because I thought I had found a tiny frog and I wanted to show them!


So you're probably wondering what the foam actually is. Not if you're smart, you're not! Skipping the rest of this post would behoove those readers with weak constitutions. Insects don't have salivary glands, so it's obviously not actually spittle. To figure this 'mist'-ery out, we need to look at what the spittlebug nymph eats. They survive by drinking plant sap and eating the xylem, one of the two types of tissues that transports nutrients through plants. Specifically, it transports water and nutrients from the roots to the leaves (the other type, phloem, carries sugars from the leaf, where they are produced, to the rest of the plant).

Most of their nutrients come from the xylem itself, but they drink a great deal of the sap as well. There are conflicting theories about how they form the spittle. One says they mix the sap with air in little organs inside their bodies, while the other says they do a little dance to create the foam as it runs down their legs. Either way, it passes through their systems and out of their anuses on its way to becoming foam.


Okay, that was a little gross. I apologize, but I wanted to get it out there before I go any further. Also, now you know one of the many reasons to wash your local food - even berries - before you eat it. We clean most of our crops a little, but I can't guarantee that strawberry you're eating never had an insect's excretions on it. As much as we may squirm at that idea, the foam performs a number of functions for the spittlebug. It keeps them moist and cool on hot, sunny days, and protects them from predators. Even if a bird or larger insect knows to look inside the collections of spit to find these guys, the stuff is really slippery, as I said before. I've accidentally brushed the spit a few times, and the spittlebug inside was always left there, looking around before it hopped away to find a new place to feed.

The foam also serves a useful purpose for us humans! I can't back this up with any website or evidence, just an anecdote. I was picking strawberries one day when I brushed my hand against a nettle, or something similar. After finding the plant and ripping it out with my multi-tool, I was left with an itchy red patch on my finger. Normally, I can put up with the discomforts of my job, but this one was really bugging me. I couldn't cure it by swimming in a cold pool like I did when I got stung at age ten, so I thought, "What would Bear Grylls do?" Realizing he would probably find something in his immediate vicinity and use it to treat the nettle sting, I looked at what I had with me. After preliminarily eliminating strawberry juice as a treatment, I went looking for a little pocket of spit, and found one handily. Two topical applications, spaced about 15 minutes apart cleared it right up! So if you're out in the woods and you run into a patch of nettles, look to the pine trees, the spittlebug's favorite food, for help.

These insects are still pests, cute or not. Feeding on the xylem hinders the plant's ability to transport water from the root to the stalk and the leaves. One individual won't do much damage by itself, but a swarm of these guys can lower a crop's yield. Don't panic if you find them, though! Panicking leads to nasty things like insecticide, and that's never good for your plants. I'm happy to report that all you need to get rid of these expectorating nuisances is a hose or even a watering can, which will do your plants some good anyway.

Squishily,
The Regular Farmer