Sooo don't really consider this as your final answer, okay?
I have some useful questions though, and wanted to say hello!
questions:
What area of the world are you in /
what's the weather been like /
what kind of lighting are these plants getting?
I don't know as much about aloe vera, but I will say your cactus looks very cute/healthy to me! I like its color, and I don't think its spines look "bad" - but I am kind of a newbie too! So take that with a large grain of salt, hah.
A suggestion I would make is to maybe get a different shaped pot the aloe vera plant actually could sit in fully? This could be something like "my personal opinion" or experience. Is your aloe vera the type that is going to grow sharp spines?
(I just learned most aloe vera grew spines so... if yours isn't a rarer spineless one, my tip about the pot becomes kind of more relevant. I was given an aloe vera plant by a friend in a smaller sized pot and it got so big I had a hard time getting it out of its pot to replant it. They grow "pups" /new aloe plants from ... uhhh the bottom of themselves (or something like that, hah)? And then they grow into full on aloe plants so you end up with multiple plants in the pot if you don't remove them.
Hah! I don't want to turn you/anyone off from aloe plants. I actually think they are awesome, and I love the way they grow, but they definitely need some maintenance in the long term. (And a wide pot so you can remove the aloe pups, in my experience, or at least, I put mine in a shallow big circle pot where its leaves barely stuck out of the sides and its pups/babies also have room for me to remove them without cutting myself on their spines.)
I generally suggest you keep these away from the walkway. I got so tired of getting poked by all my MIL's aloes I had to redesign the layout of our outdoor plants to put the aloes out of unintentional reach.
My mother in law had skin cancer 8 years ago on her nose and her doctor told her told her to put aloe vera on the skin there after treatment.
She ended up with at least 50 aloe vera plants from 1
(Now that I think about it it actually is eerie to think that there are probably more like 75 plants in the 5+ pots she has the aloes growing in.
)
A lot of them are literally 4 deep (not counting the ones beneath the soil) in a pot and look crazy congested
One of the most crowded plastic pots started literally bursting at the bottom. When it got knocked over it looked like it exploded and we still have a pile of aloe vera plants we need to plant.
This story might inspire me to go do that soon. They are amazingly hardy little buggers but that doesn't mean I should abuse them!
Mine is actually in flower now for the first time since I owned it, I LOVE it. The flower stalk seems a few feet long. (I went out front to check, and yep, its like 2 feet tall)
The other day I saw someone's front yard who had like 15 aloe vera plants circling a tree and they were all in flower. It looked AMAZING.
Can I mix the soil I have now so I won't just throw it away?