Aloe, goodbye! Houseplant help.

[TonTonMacoute]

DS asked me for help with his aloe. I suggested he get it out of the pot to see if it was too dry/wet and it looked like this. It's completely come away from the roots.

I suspect overwatering which has just rotted the base. Or could it be a pest?

Would welcome any thoughts, oh wise ones!

You’ve forgotten the photo, but if you have healthy leaves you should be able to propagate new plants from them.

I'm an idiot,

Thanks for the tip. He's going to give it a try!

Aloes won’t propagate from leaves, but if you allow your plant to callous for a week (and remove the brown lower leaf), then sit it on dry gritty compost, it should root slowly.

I seem to remember @NanTheWiser said aloes couldn’t be propagated from leaves (whereas Haworthia can)

Make sure there’s no rotten stuff on that base (it looks pretty clean), leave a week or so for it to dry off and callous over, then pot it into gritty,free draining soil. You could take the bottom two leaves off, but even so you’ll only have about 1cm in the soil, so use 3 sticks, one on each side, to hold it upright and stop it wobbling.

It's hard to kill an aloe. They just regenerate.

Buy some cacti compost or add grit to normal compost. Use a pot with holes and a saucer under to catch water (not a bigger pot). This way you can't overwater as it spills over the saucer.

It will recover quickly.

Thanks all.

I've been trying to get him into plants, and he loves the idea but things keep dying on him, it will give him a boost if he can 'rescue' this one.

I've told him he's got a long way to go before he catches up with my record of plant deaths.