A customer in Russia (thanks, guy!) said he got better results with growing mandrakes under shoplights than under natural light, so I decided to try it this winter. So far, I have been really impressed. I started them on dilute liquid kelp solution in terms of fertilizer, yet they became much more robust than plants started in natural dappled shade. These are ordinary cheap shoplights, the kind that hung on chains over your (grand)dad's workbench. They cost $16 for each fixture at Lowe's and hold two 4-foot 40-watt fluorescent bulbs. I have mine set up on an inexpensive rolling metal rack and plugged into a surge protector. The top of the plants should be kept an inch or so from the bottom of the lamps. The lights are cool enough that they don't burn the leaves. I have been running the lights for 14-16 hours/day. Shoplights are great for germinating seeds and growing leafy plants like lettuce inside, but they don't usually provide enough light for flowering and fruiting. We'll see how far along we can coax these babies! I am hoping to keep them going until spring, when they can be put out into a cold frame and get organic flowering/fruiting fertilizer. It might be possible in this way to actually get mandrakes to fruit in North America. Woohoo! General growing info.

Here are results from Russia - two mandrakes grown from the same root broken into two pieces (by the way, this is a great way to get more mandrakes, one that the plant uses itself in the wild). The root pieces were started at the same time, one under shoplights, one in window light, which is actually much brighter than shoplights. Check out the difference:

Window-light


24-hour shoplights (this plant in a pot that looks about a foot long)

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12/13/05 - These black mandrakes were planted Samhain 2005, 2013, after soaking in cold water for three weeks (changed for fresh water daily). Here they are after one month of growth under shoplights, in a 6"/15cm pot.

12/25/05 - Only 2 weeks later than the first pic but already much bigger. These are almost ready to pot up. I have not seen mandrakes put on so much top growth so quickly before. Lots of leaves now will help them make big roots later.

01/16/05 - Potting up day! These were shifted over to a wider and much deeper pot. Roots were already beginning to circle around the bottom of this pot, so although the tops did not look like they needed repotting, the roots did. Roots for the smallest plant in this pic were 8"/20cm long, but all were thin and white, as the plants are still establishing themselves. Back under the shoplights they go with their siblings.

2/04/06 - Here they are after a couple weeks in a much larger pot (10"/25cm). I have added a 6-6-6 organic fertilizer for stimulating vegetative growth to the dilute liquid kelp fertilizer. They are going to have to be separated soon. Contrast the crisp, dark, shiney, healthy looking leaves on this plant to how they normally look when grown in natural light - limp and dull.

02/12/06 - A black mandrake in a 10"/25cm pot. I potted up more mandrakes into 10"/25cm pots and separated those I had three to a pot, giving each their own pot so they had room to stretch out. I noticed that most of the plants had sent white feeder roots throughout the dirt in all directions. Three months after they were first sown as seeds, most of the plants now also have classic mandrake taproots, similar to a thin White Icicle radish, most with at least one arm. These taproots are cream-colored or white, not black, as they are sometimes described (these mandrakes are called "black" on account of their purple flowers). One root had reached the bottom of a 8"/20cm pot and had folded over itself twice, showing how important it is to give these babies long pots. It can be difficult to find such pots locally, so be creative - you can use wastepaperbaskets with holes in the bottom for drainage, for instance. Note that the fertilizers I have been using on the plants are just dilute liquid kelp solution and an organic 6-6-6. I haven't used any fertilizers specifically for root growth.

04/08/06 - I began giving the plants Omega 1-5-5 to encourage blooming about 12 days ago. I fed them 2-3 times with this solution until  ran out of it. There are now buds on one of the plants! You can see them at the center of the rosette above - mandrake flowers have short or no stalks. I have also been shifting all the mandrakes outside during the day and bringing them in at night for the past two weeks - I knew that to get flowers, they would need much more intense light than they can get from shoplights. They are in full shade during the day in a protected area - between a shed and a large tank - to block the cold wind. Temperatures have been in the 50s-60sF/10s-20sC. They came through a short but heavy rainfall just fine. Some plants have been potted up to 12" pots, but not the one that is budding; it's still in a 10" pot and might be flowering because it is pot-bound. The flowers opened on Beltane Eve!

05/12/06 - As you can see, these plants have become quite large in their 12" pots and are very healthy growing in full shade outside here in upstate NY. This plant, the first to flower, has a number of blooms. About five of the other mandrakes are now budding. Temperatures have averaged between 40-75F in the daytime and 35-60F at night. We even had a few days of heat, one day of 91F, and yet the plants came through just fine.

06/12/06 - Good and bad news. The bad news is the flowers on a number of the plants are wilting. I am not sure if this is because they are not being pollinated appropriately, because we have had a great deal of rain here, and the pots are really sopping, or because that is just what they do. They do not look like they are forming fruits. However, the good news is that the size and shape of these roots is quite impressive. I have dug several up in order to repot them into 16" pots. Take a look at this extraordinary beauty. This is not a bunch of roots together but just one root. So far, the roots are very much like this - almost like a group of roots and not extending too far down in the pot. This single plant, which was in a 12" pot and is eight months old, provided a harvest of two good-sized roots with branches and six small roots as well as the main large root. I have replanted the small and main roots and harvested the two others. More good news: As I was digging in an old pot of dirt where I'd previously had a mandrake growing, I pulled up a "weed" that was growing there, and lo and behold, it was a mandrake that had grown from a small piece of root left in the soil! Now we now why mandrake germinates so reluctantly from seed. It doesn't have to expend all that energy to flower and fruit and hope that its seeds are harvested, planted, and grow. It can so readily reproduce itself by cloning that it doesn't have to bother with seeds. The propensity of this plant to clone has interesting magickal implications.

06/22/06 - One of the mandrakes is producing a fruit. I can hardly believe my eyes. It is inside the calyx, a vivid dark green speckled ball. One other flower stub has a fruit starting to form on the same plant, but the rest of the flowers simply wilted. I wonder now if they did not get pollinated. I did pollinate one by hand. If they fruit again, I will pollinate all of them with a paint brush. Also, the exposed parts of the root pieces I planted are callusing over.