Aaron wrote:I had an idea to set the tray of the small ones underneath the outside air conditioner condensation drip; as such should supply a steady drip of water everyday.
I believe it was Goethe that said, "observe nature and copy it." In native American herbology, every plant has a purpose. Nothing exists by accident. Aloe works with the skin (obviously) by providing it with the proper substances to balance it against the environment. That's why you find it in the tropics--where the sun is the brightest and most damaging to the flesh.
If you want aloe to generate the protective substances it needs to effectively block the damaging rays of the sun, which would be it's "life's purpose," then it needs to be directly exposed to direct sunlight. It is a full-sun plant, so the more sun, the better. It will do its own spectral analysis of the solar radiation, and in response, generate the substances to protect itself from it--and you, when you make use of the juice. That's the kind of rapport that nature lives in.
You want to water it either by daily rainfall (aloe likes to be soaked, once a day), which is common in the regions it grows in, or watered daily from a ground water source. A/C condensation is basically
distilled water, containing no minerals, whereas well water is loaded with local minerals. Distilled water, being unnatural in rainfall, would put the plant into survival mode--not growth mode. Perhaps you should consider putting a barrel out back to catch rain water. Place it under a downspout from the house roof, and you'll be surprised how fast it fills up. Hang a silver coin on a string in the barrel, and it will naturally disinfect and provide better immunity to the plants you water with it. It's actually a very old technique, prior to public water supplies.
I'm using aloe for an example, but the same applies to all herbal plants. Native Americans treat plants like mini-laboratory computers--submit a sample, and it figures out how to solve the problem.
