Also, what other plants would you recommend?
I remember someone recommending hydroponics a while back. Would you still recommend hydro' for temperate climates?
Any help appreciated.
ess
essncee@hushmail.com (http://mailto:essncee@hushmail.com)
http://www.richters.com (http://www.richters.com)
You need to find some unused or waste ground and plant a load. Your home Garden might be too small. These plants grow in arid regions and can withstand a fair amount of drought - once they're established. Gardening in the waste ground could be easy. They want lots of sun. Plant them at least 2 feet apart. Fertiliser once or twice a years. Water them during drought.
Hydroponics seems a bit over the top to me - better to just plant 3 or 4 times as many seeds as you think you need. Tens to hundreds.
Get the right specis for your climate. Most eephedra specis grow in Californian/Mediterranean type climate.
Northern Europeans, etc, need a hardier species (Siberian) - but these plants will withstand frost and everything mother nature throws at them.
Cherrie Baby: Seems like both available species(Ephedra nevadensis and Ephedra viridis) are desert lovers and will thrive where I will be living (California Central Coast). Do you know which species is more potent?
Also I've read that the twigs and branches contain the most ephedrine. Can anyone confirm this? Are the seeds useful for anything except planting?
And lastly... 7 YEARS! until a harvest? I think I'd better buy some ma huang. Anybody know where I can get 100 lbs wholesale?
mucho gracias - ess
Table 2. Mean Levels of Ephedrine and Pseudoephedrine
(Percentage of Ephedrine-E, and Pseudoephedrine-PE)
Species - Geographic Area - E - PE
Ephedra major - Spain, Sicily, Afghanistan, Pakistan - 1.9% - trace
Ephedra sinica - Northern China to Outer Mongolia - 0.76% - 0.28%
Ephedra equesitina - Inner Mongolia - 1.25% -0.58%
Ephedra intermedia - Pakistan to Mongolia - 1.15% - 0.084%
Ephedra gerardiana - Northwest Himalayas, northern India, western Pakistan, Tibet, and Szechwan and Yunnan provinces of China - 0.77% - 0.10%
I took this from a document called "Ephedra: A Potential Precursor for D-Methamphetamine Production" - May 1997 written by NDIC - (I think).
The original link to this is in the meth forum. Because I've made so few posts you should be able to find it there if you seach my posts in that forum.
I found that Ephedra sinica grows very slowly in temperate climates (London, UK) but that Ephedra equesitina does well.