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

The plant can get a size of (in ideal conditions) 2 to 5 meters tall. Since it’s native to South Africa it’s important to place the plant in full sun for optimal growth, and if you expect flowers it’s essential. Both the leaves and flowers can be used to smoke or to make tea out of it. Leonurine, one of the psychoactive alkaloids in Leonotis Leonorus, is easily extracted through a water infusion. Personally I do not have any experience with the use of this plant so far, but when I have it will be shared.

I started two separate pots as an experiment, one inside and one in the garden in the same week. Temperatures outside were pretty cold when I started the seeds in the beginning of May, and sometimes plummeted to a chilly 4 degrees Celsius. Not the most ideal circumstances for this plant you would say, but two seeds sprouted nonetheless. I watered plenty in the seedling stage ,and decreased watering when the plant is established. The seedlings inside seemed to thrive very well compared to the seedlings outside, simply because of the temperature differences. It was too cold outside so the small plants went back to a resting-state when the plants inside started to grow. Every pot held about 20 seeds each, 2 seeds sprouted outside, 3 inside. No massive germination rates here. The seeds I started inside where inside a small mat-heated greenhouse with a pretty high humidity. I lost one plant inside on the way, but I do not have an explanation why this happened. Just chance I guess.

When the sun came back in in the end of May the outside plants started showing some growth again. The ones inside were still growing steadily. I pruned the bigger plant of the two inside, and it stretched out two more arms.

Now in July, the differences between the two are still very noticable.

The in-house grown dagga

Don’t mind the white substance on the leaves, it’s spilled paraffine from the candle that was above it…

The outside-grown Dagga