Project numero uno (Translated: My first exciting grow project)

Here's the scoop. I get home and there's all sorts of plants that need some lovin. So like Shaft, I see the need and fill it with need sauce.

Project 1:

Question: Can you grow aloe from a cutting?
Answer: I dunno. Let's try.

Heard some bullshit online that you need to start aloe from a pup. Whatever the hell a 'pup' is. I've never seen any dog kick some aloe out its belly, but whatever it's probably some term horticulturists use to lord over us average folk. All I know is that aloe looks sorta cactus-y so it should do something like a cactus should. Really technical, I know, but it's not about terms/jargon here... it's about the experience!

I took a cutting from an aloe plant. It's about a foot long. Shoved it in some dirt with little water. I've read that you don't want too much water or the plant won't have to 'work' to get it. Root formation is the plants way of getting off its ass and surviving. But they do it all slow and this blog is a way for me to keep busy while they get around to it.

There's another cutting that had already started to root that's under the same lights. One light is a lamp with a shade, the other is my sanitary lampkin. They were both planted yesterday, the mystery cutting in some miracle grow potting soil and the aloe in some dirt that was in some other plant in the living room. Both in two inch wide peat pots. Both light sources are compact fluorescent light bulbs (CFLs), 1600 lumens a pop. Picked a two-pack up at Home Depot for six bucks, whoopdee doo. They will be left on 24 hours a day to promote growth, make it impossible to sleep, and ruin the electric bill.


This is a picture from yesterday. This is the initial setup with a incadecent light in the lamp.


Here's one from today. You can see it got a bit more cluttered, but those other plants aren't doing any harm because they're being watched by me Jesus and the feds. The mother aloe plant is in there looking at it's body part. You can see my sanitary lampkin doing its job with a cfl jammed in its head. I have no idea what that other cutting is. Its some houseplant mystery. It had roots already though so screw it, lets make it bigger! Hopefully it won't grow up and attack me Little-Shop-of-Horrors-style.

By the way, I chain smoke and I think this will help those guys grow. My reasoning is, if smoking causes cancer and cancer is cell growth and plants have cells, then logically, plants will grow faster around me. Take that health monkeys!


That's about it for now. I'll try to do daily updates, with pictures and stuff, but I'm not making any promises.

~Grow Monkey