If you decide to grow and produce Kratom, you will find that it can be quite an ordeal. This Southeast Asian plant requires conditions very close to its tropical home – hot and humid. Considering most of the US has a temperate climate, the reproduction of such conditions can be a challenge.
However, nothing is impossible with a little ingenuity and a good deal of hard work. In this little article, we’ll teach you how to produce your own Kratom and what growing pains (pun fully intended) you’ll experience with this plant.
Get Your Soil Right
As we said, Kratom grows mostly in Southeast Asia – namely Thailand, Indonesia, Myanmar, Papua New Guinea, and Malaysia. These countries feature a tropical climate, both hot and humid, and with plenty of rainfall all year round, especially in the monsoon season.
This means that the ideal soil for Kratom needs to be very moist and full of humus. However, the trick to Kratom soil is that it also needs to be able to drain well, but not so well that it doesn’t retain moisture at all.
In essence, this will be your first challenge if you want to grow and produce Kratom. The soil needs to be absolutely ideal, in terms of moisture and airiness, as well as needing to have a pH value of 5.5 to 6.5, or the plant won’t grow at all.
Just Enough Light
Plants like light, right? Just stick that sucker on the window, and it’ll be fine. Nope! Maybe you can do this with a potato (cuz, let’s face it, that thing can grow anywhere), but a Kratom plant will require a much better balance in lighting than any other plant.
Now, while fully grown Kratoms like a lot of sunlight, you shouldn’t expose them to so much light that the tree dries out. This is especially important if you’re working with seeds, as Kratom seeds actually require shade to grow, as, in nature, they’re usually growing under the immense, thick canopy of the rainforest.
That being said, if you intend to grow Kratom indoors, you’ll need to use and carefully manage growing lights, as well as create greenhouse conditions in order to grow the plant properly.
The Perfect Temperature
The perfect temperature for growing Kratom is 70-90 degrees F. As you can guess, this doesn’t give you a lot of wiggle room, as plants exposed to temperatures of 60 degrees for a prolonged period of time will become stunted or die altogether.
On the other end of the scale, high temperatures akin to that of arid climates will dry out the plant and your Kratom will wilt.
As before, your best bet for creating a controlled environment is a greenhouse. Those that don’t have the means to create one are going to have a tough time balancing all the elements needed to grow a Kratom.
Seeds, Cuttings, or Sprouts
There are three main ways to grow a Kratom – grow it from scratch using seeds, grow it using cuttings, or use already established sprouts.
Growing Kratom using seeds is straight-up hard mode. Kratom seeds need to be extremely fresh to grow, and even then, their germination percentile is very low, hovering around 20% under ideal conditions. Not as easy as growing an avocado tree from the seed, don’t you think?
This is why Kratom seeds are not only hard to obtain, but also very expensive. And while you might find cheap Kratom available online easily, finding proper, fresh seeds is a very difficult venture.
If you still intend to grow Kratom from seeds, you will need 5 to 10 of them to have any chance, put into fertile, humus-rich soil of carefully controlled moisture and pH levels. And prayers. Lots of prayers.
Growing Kratom from cuttings is a little bit easier, as you’re skipping the germination process, but don’t let that fool you. Cuttings also have to be carefully monitored from day one. In addition, cuttings are also very susceptible to disease and fungus that usually grows in conditions similar to kratom, so you’ll need to be on the lookout for that as well.
Growing Kratom from sprouts is the easiest and the most preferred method. Sprouts are easily obtained from most reputable vendors – however, you’ll still need to strictly adhere to the temperature, lighting, and soil conditions we outlined above.
Wrapping Up
And there you have it, all you need to know on how to grow and produce Kratom. And, yes, we realize the irony in our words – the truth is, Kratom plants are incredibly hard to grow and will require a dedicated and skilled gardener, and both green thumbs to bring this venture to fruition.