Growing Moringa: Intensive Moringa Cultivation - Day 45 Update
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It's been 30 days since the last update. Today I'll share with you germination rates from the 2nd planting as well as plant height and stem diameters.
Transcripts: It's been 45 days since planting the Moringa seeds in this raised bed. It's been nearly 30 days since our last update. We're definitely due for an update to see how the Moringa's doing. Over the last 30 days, we've had some fairly varied temperatures. We've had day-time highs for a period of a week, in the low 60's. Then on another week we've had day-time highs in the low 90's. At night-time we've seen temperatures, again, drop down into the 50's and sometimes stay in the low 60's.
That being said, we've kept the row covers on nearly all the time. On the warmer days I've been taking the cover off from about 10 o'clock mid-morning to mid-afternoon, say 2:00-2:30. As far as watering is concerned in this bed, been running these sprinklers for about 5 minutes a day. Between the 20 sprinklers that are installed, that works out to about 10 gallons a day. I know that's more than necessary at this point, but I want to be safe and establish some sort of baseline. I have just installed a control valve and timer for this bed. So we're going to start being a little more accurate and precise with the water requirements and trying to determine exactly what the Moringa need.
As I mentioned in my last post on the website, out of the 282 seeds that were originally planted in this bed, 190 of them germinated. I really wanted all 4 of these sections to be filled out to their full plant density. As I mentioned previously, I did go ahead and re-plant on day 24 the second round of planting to fill in all the gaps that existed in this bed. On day 35, I spread compost on this half of the raised bed, right down all four sections. I wanted to do that as well for a test to see if this soil, the base soil, was rich enough, or whether the compost, which was composted cow manure from a local organic dairy farm. I wanted to see if that enriched the soil enough to make a substantial difference in the growth.
We've collected 2 full sets of data on all seedlings in this bed. One on day 27, and the second set of data on day 41. I also took a full set of data just on the seedlings in section 1, right here. That was done on day 35, the same day I put the composted manure on the bed. That's an overview of what I have been doing in this bed over the last 30 days.
Let's take a look and see what the Moringa has been doing. Of the 92 seeds that were planted, we had 81 of those seeds germinate. Coincidentally, that is an 88% germination rate. The same germination rate, we had in our first planting for our control group of seeds. While most of the seedlings are doing quite well, we did have 3 seedlings that died. They were all in section 3, and they were all in close proximity to each other. At this point, it would just be guessing to give you a reason as to why they died. I did want to point out we did have 3 seedlings out of all the ones planted, die when they were just a few inches tall.
A few other observations in this bed, a few of the seeds that germinated later, came up with 2 stems. Some of these seedlings took almost twice as long to germinate and to emerge as their single stem siblings. Additionally, some of the seedlings that emerged had a second stem emerge days to even weeks later, that came up alongside of the first stem.
When the plants are stressed, the lower leaves seem to show it first. You may see a yellowing of the leaves, or the leaves may wilt and die. This could be due to temperature or to irrigation or watering requirements among other things. In this case, I think because it's still too cold really to be planting Moringa, I think that the lower leaf stress that we're seeing is being caused by colder than ideal temperatures.