Why Your Aloe Plant Is Turning Brown (And How To Fix It)

Aloe vera is one of the easiest houseplants to keep alive. The unique leaves add a decorative touch to your space. Plus, it has antibacterial and healing properties. However, while your succulent may be alive, you want it to be healthy too. Brown leaves indicate your hard-to-kill plant is sick. The leading causes of discoloration are dehydration, overwatering, and excess nutrients. All these issues can be resolved by changing how you care for the aloe plant.

Unfortunately, your brown leaves won't return to their vibrant green; you'll have to prune the damage. But when you snip away the compromised leaves and fix the underline cause, it makes way for plump and healthy stalks. A proper routine for watering and repotting will solve the primary causes and help to control pests and diseases, which can also cause brown spots to appear on the succulent. For aloe vera as green as your thumb, it's all about the right amount of water and type of soil.

When your aloe vera plant doesn't get enough water, the leaf tips turn brown and dry out. You'll also see the vegetation shrink in size, and the leaves curl inward as they seek moisture. Underwatering usually means your succulent is neglected or burning up in direct sunlight. Place your plant in indirect sun to avoid drying out and dehydration. Aloe plants are native to dry areas and require infrequent water. So, too much water is just as bad as too little.

If your succulent is overwatered, the roots drown and rot while the leaves turn brown and mushy. Ideally, you want the soil to dry before offering the plant a drink. At least one to two inches of the soil's top layer should be completely dry before watering. A porous planter like terra cotta or concrete is best for potted aloe vera to allow for excess water drainage.

While we need water every day, your aloe plant just needs a heavy downpour every three weeks during warm weather months. Once every four weeks will do during the winter. You want enough water to reach the roots but not so much that it pools atop the soil. This practice will prevent the lush greenery from going brown. However, if you have the perfect watering schedule and your succulent is more of a coffee than matcha shade, it might be a fertilizer problem.

Aloe vera is a low-maintenance plant. Just like it doesn't need a lot of watering, it also doesn't need a whole lot of fertilizer. Too much fertilizer causes salt to build up around the roots of the plant, which impedes the aloe's ability to soak up water from the soil, causing brown discoloration. If your plant is suffering from build-up, you can flush the excess by leaching the soil using distilled or rainwater. You'll need to wash the soil with enough water equal to twice the volume of its pot.

A ratio of 0.5 nitrogen, 1 phosphorus, and 1 potassium is all the nutrients that this succulent needs. Although, instead of using fertilizer, it is better to repot your aloe vera every two years. The roots will have more place to stretch, and the new soil will restore any lost nutrients. Learning how to correctly grow and take care of aloe vera plants will leave you with a flourishing succulent that is pretty to look at and has an array of health benefits.