Peganum Harmala, another try this year
Posted by Growing Entheogens | Filed under growing from seed, MAOI, Outside, Peganum Harmala, Perennial, Syrian Rue
Being a perennial doesn’t help much if you don’t survive the first year. Since the Harmala died last year, I gave it another try. It was already pretty late in the season when I thought of planting a new batch of seeds in a pot, but trying wouldn’t hurt anyone.
I scooped up a few again, coming from the same batch as last years grown Harmala. I picked a pot where I tried to grow Hevea brasiliensis (rubber plant) in (which did not succeed) and sprinkled some seeds on top of the soil, and covered that again with a very fine layer of soil. This year I didn’t have any spare sand laying around, so I just had to try it in the potting soil as it was.
The new sprouted Harmala
The Harmala after one month
The P. Harmala outside, 2 months
I didn’t take care too much of them, just watering them sparely every now and then. This summer wasn’t the best for all of my plants, all the rain taken into account. June was a decent month, pretty dry, and July had it’s fair amount of sun as well. From half July on, especially in August, we had some bad days with heavy rain. August 27 came down hard with 135 mm of rain, just that day. I thought this would kill off the Harmala, but it did pretty well afterwords. The snails seem to love it though, they ate a lot from the young plants, leaving small empty stalks behind. With a bit of attention every day and throwing away a small snail or two every day, things work out pretty well for the plant. This winter it will go inside, and next spring I will take it out again.
The Harmala thinned out by rain and snails, 3 months
Expand your mind, be self-sufficient, grow your own. Share your seeds
and cuttings, the more knowledge the faster the growth.
November 12, 2010 at 8:42 pm
Growing Peganum from cuttings:
I have a few Peganums that I managed to get past seedling stage (no thanks to the sparrows!) about 5 or more years ago. They don’t do much in my temperate climate – they grow, they flower, but no seed. Due to increased biosecurity measures in this country that require all seed intercepted by border control to be heat treated, I have been struggling to find a way of propagating them without seed. I have divided a couple with success (and harvested roots for extraction, rather than using the non-existent seeds), but it’s a slow and arduous way of increasing numbers.
Web trawling didn’t bring up any information, or even rumours, of being able to grow her from cuttings or root cuttings. Having had success with jiffy cubes for various plants, I decided to give it a go with Peganum. I took a few cuttings from each of 4 plants (early Spring), dipped them in rooting hormone gel and put them into the humidity dome (a plastic cake protector froma supermarket cake) and left them. Usually plants show signs of rooting – with roots emerging from the edge of the jiffy cube 0 within 2-4 weeks. All I had were some healthy looking stems and leaves – not wiltign due to the high humidity – but no sign of roots. After another month I opened it again and pulled up a few that were rotting – no surprises, no roots. I decided to leave them there to see what would happen – another 6+ weeks later, I checked got them down from the window sill to throw them out, as they were looking prett scrappy, wilted and brown.
and Lo! and Behold! there were ROOTS – only 1 is now at the stage of being removed from the humidity dome; the others that have grown roots only have 1 emerging from the base but have shown signns of shoot growth from the base – but – IT IS POSSIBLE to grow Peganum harmala from cuttings!! I didn’t document it at all, but will have another go and do so and post! At this stage I’d say strike rate is 20% or less using the above method.
If there’s a way to get images to you to post let me know.
I also have a root cutting in a pot but it doesn’t seem to have done much in terms of putting out leaves in the same period (2-3 months).
cheers
DG
December 28, 2010 at 10:40 pm
See Erowid Syrian Rue vaults for a pic of these.