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

Let me start with a quote from the book ‘Growing The Hallucinogens‘ by Hudson Grubber

Peganum harmala L.;
Caltrop family (Zygophyllaceae)

A bright green, succulent, perennial herb, becoming woody with age, growing 1 to 2 feet tall. The leaves are 2 inches long and finely divided. The flowers are white, five-petaled, followed by a two- to four-cavitied capsuleabout 3/8 inch in diameter. Native to the deserts of southern Asia and Africa. Also found wild in some parts of Texas.

Cultivation and Propagation: Syrian rue may be grown outdoors in the South and West. It does well in dry sandy soils, but will benefit from somewhat richer soils. Will stand considerable drought. Viable seeds are rare but are the best means of propagation. These should be sown in flats of half sand, half soil, in April and May. Water sparingly, letting the surface dry. The seedlings are very susceptible to overwatering. They should be grown as pot plants the first year, and brought indoors in the winter. In the following spring they may be planted outdoors. In cold-winter areas the roots should be lifted and stored in damp sawdust in a cool place until early spring. Be sure to plant out before new growth starts.

Harvesting: The seeds should be gathered as the capsules ripen and should be dried in the sun. The roots may be harvested in autumn, in the same manner as kava roots, after the tops die from frost. These should be split and dried in the sun. The stems and foliage are inactive.

The wikipedia entry on Peganum Harmala:

Harmal (Peganum harmala) is a plant of the family Nitrariaceae, native from the eastern Mediterranean region east to India. It is also known as Syrian Rue, an inaccurate name, since it is not in the rue (Ruta, Rutaceae) family.

It is a perennial plant which can grow to about 0.8 m tall, but normally it is about 0.3 m tall. The roots of the plant can reach a depth of up to 6.1 m, if the soil it is growing in is very dry. It blossoms between June and August in the Northern Hemisphere. The flowers are white and are about 2.5–3.8 cm in diameter. The round seed capsules measure about 1–1.5 cm in diameter, have three chambers and carry more than 50 seeds.

The common use for this plant’s seeds are to act as a monoamine oxidase inhibitor, or MAOI. P. Harmala seeds can be used on their own as an entheogen, but acts stronger in combination with other plants. It is used for example in combination with Banisteriopsis Caapi to create an analogue Ayahuasca. The dosage to take for the Harmala seeds to function is between 3 and 5 grams, depending on the persons who ingests the seeds his weight. MAOIs inhibit naturally occurring enzymes in the human body. This inhibition leads to increased levels of chemicals such as the neurotransmitters serotonin and dopamine. By slowing their metabolism, MAOIs also allow chemicals such as N,N-DMT, to become active when taken orally.

I had a bag of somewhat old (2 years maybe) P. Harmala seeds laying around so I thought to give it a try. I prepared two pots with the soil descriped as in the article above, which basically is the sand in my backyard. I live near the coast of the Netherlands, and since most of the soil here is sand mixed with potting soil that we added over the years, the soil seemed ideal to me. I placed a bunch of seeds in each pot (I didn’t mind counting them ), watered them, and placed one pot in the windowsill of my room, and the other one in my backyard. The second one placed in the backyard seemed to be sprouting seedlings very soon, but after a few days we had a rainstorm, and P. Harmala, being a desert plant, didn’t quite like that.

The container in the windowsill is growing slowly but steadily. I already had 5 seeds sprouting, of which three survived so far. Watering is being done from below once a week, and sprayed on top every other day, in very small amounts. The pot is partly shaded, because I thought that if I would put it in full sun it would dry out completely too fast.

After another week of hot and sunny weather and a good watering, eight other seeds sprouted, and the two largest seedlings have developed even further.I noticed that the plant prefers water from below so it can suck it up through it’s roots. I still spray water on top as well in small amounts just to be sure everything goes well. The smaller seedlings with their small roots can’t reach the bottom layer yet, so they need the water from the top to grow. More updates to come.