Hi Josiah,

I just use a peat seed starting mix and then add some perlite to it, keeping it moist with a sprayer. I sow mine in little plastic to-go food containers.

I start to harvest my pods when the first one in a bunch dries. The rest dry and open soon after. Once the pods are a certain size, and don't look like they are growing more in size, they are viable and can be picked before opening.

You can quickly get hundreds of seed from a few plants, so once they grow out, you have to be very selective in what you let out, to avoid hordes of similar-looking hybrids.

Will the seedpods still be a little bit green when you harvest them?

On general, will using one plant as the female tend to pass traits more than using it as the male?

Yes, they'll turn from green to brown as they dry, and the sides will start to separate.

You raise a good question. I have not done enough of this work to be able to say, but I am curious to try it out. I would say some traits are gender-dependant. I've seen a number of aloe variegata hybrids, for example, and they all tend to look more like variegata than any other constituent aloes.

Tom