Cold Hardy Moringa

So far, none of my Moringa stenopetala seedlings seem to have survived through the winter. It was a long shot . . . but I was hoping!

Still, you never know – maybe they’ll pop up and surprise me around June or something.

Do not give up yet.

My Moringa has just come back from the roots.

I have 3 in the ground and they all 3 are now 3-4 inches above the ground and just getting started.

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They like to wait pretty late, and that can be very beneficial in areas that have winter heatwaves and late spring frosts.

My potted moringa is outside and starting to flower. The potted dwarf moringa which was a tiny pencil got nibbled by my goats just as it was starting to leaf out (they have never bothered my larger tree) I believe it’s dead but I’ll leave it for a while & see if anything pops up from the root.

I put 3 odc3 seedlings in the ground and 2 in pots. I plan to direct sow more of these and the dwarf seeds I have left. Im hoping odc3s tendency to make pods the first year makes it easier to work with for adaptation purposes.

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Here are my survivors:

Well here’s one. The other picture isn’t uploading. I’ll try later.

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The one who chose to grow sideways. Kinda makes me want to make it a bonsai..

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That would be such a cool bonsai! I had not even thought of doing that with a moringa. I like the bends it already has.

Is that the bird character from the “donkey hotie” cartoon? :laughing:

I used to follow the Moringa fb group closely and the consensus was that they really like to be pruned to make the trunk thicken/strengthen.

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I have a few leaning “pencil trunks” that I have been thinking about chopping to try to grow as cuttings so I may do this soon.

Haha yeah, I forget the bird’s name. A friend of mine at work bought a set of figurines. I know nothing about them, but I ended up with the bird and Donkey (he lives in my Aerogarden). Donkey used to be that friend’s hood ornament on his work truck. :sweat_smile:

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I’m surprised at how flexible and pliable these plants are. How much pruning can they handle? If I chop most of the trunk at the end of the season, will it regrow?

I’m not sure, I’ve yet to grow Moringa myself. From what I recall in the group alot of people would cut it at a comfortable height to continue to harvest from it. Pollarding them in the growing season to stimulate them to grow more branches and not just shoot up forever with only the main stem and 2 branches.
I know others would top the tree somewhat low and bundle up around it and cover it to protect it in the winter to try and keep as much of the trunk from freezing (and dying) as possible. Then they start next year with whatever survived.

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That’s funny. My daughter used to watch that show a lot.

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If they like to be pruned, that would be nifty. They have a tendency to grow pretty tall, which would make the leaves hard to reach, so you could just lop off a branch that’s getting too high to reach and eat all the leaves whenever you want to.

I chop my potted moringa every year and it doesn’t seem the least bothered. I do leave a good bit of trunk. I keep it at 6 feet or so.

In this post Dave the good describes his process of chopping back to 4 feet of trunk. He says he sees stronger regrowth from trees with some trunk preserved vs those that have died back to the ground.

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New growth emerging from the largest of my in-ground moringa, just as I was starting to give up on them.

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The Moringa concanensis has finally returned. I had really given up on this one, so this was a great surprise.

I’ve had many rounds of flowers on all the potted M. oleifera, but so far it doesn’t seem like any are going to make seeds.

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Yay! Tree is growing! :tada:

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The in ground M. oleifera has grown to about 3ft tall this year (it had reached around 6ft last year from seed)

My M. concanensis has not added much growth at all, it is still only about 1 inch tall.

I have been looking into other Moringa species that show potential cold hardiness and M. peregrina seems to be the next best candidate. From what I have found it is actually slightly more cold hardy than M. oleifera. It is also more adapted to dry desert environments (my concern is that it may not be able to handle the wetter conditions).

While researching this species I came across this:

Sustainable Bioresources again! They are doing some awesome stuff with Moringa and the prices are not too bad.

They are offering lots of M. peregrina seed which, when grow, showed signs of hybridization with other Moringa species.

So this seems like a great option. They’ve already done the work of hybridization, having the benefit of being in Hawaii, which is the hard part for me working in a temperate climate.

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