Moringa (Sohanjna) Tree at Home: Grow From Seed, Pot or Ground

Sow a soaked moringa seed in March and by winter you may need a ladder to reach the leaves. That’s the real challenge of how to grow moringa from seed: it isn’t getting it to sprout, it’s keeping a tree that wants to hit 10 metres short and bushy enough to pick. Here’s how to sow it, choose between a pot and the ground, prune it at head height, and get it through a Punjab winter.

How to grow moringa from seed, step by step

Moringa seeds come inside the long pods, three-winged and papery, with a round, dark kernel in the middle. Fresh seed from last season sprouts best; seed that’s more than a year or two old often doesn’t sprout at all. Ask a neighbour with a tree for a dry, brown pod, or buy from a nursery that dates its packets.

Timing matters more than any trick. Moringa needs warmth to germinate, so sow from late February to April or in the monsoon, because seeds sown in December just sit in cold soil until they rot.

1. Peel off the papery wings if you like (it’s optional), and soak the seeds in plain water for 12 to 24 hours.
2. Fill a deep pot or grow bag, at least 20 cm deep, with 2 parts garden soil, 1 part sand and 1 part compost. Moringa hates wet feet, so the mix must drain freely.
3. Sow 2 seeds per pot, 2 cm deep, and water once.
4. Keep the pot in a warm, bright place and the soil just damp, never soggy. Sprouts usually appear in 5 to 14 days.
5. Keep the strongest seedling and snip the other at soil level.
6. Move it to its final pot or ground spot when it’s 20 to 30 cm tall, about 4 to 6 weeks after sowing.

Why so early? Seed-grown moringa makes a thick, carrot-like taproot that heads straight down, and a seedling moved while that root is short barely notices, while one left three months in a small pot ends up with a coiled root that snaps in the move and a plant that sulks for weeks.

Seed or cutting?

Big cuttings root too. A branch as thick as a wrist and 1 to 1.5 metres long, pushed into moist ground in the monsoon, usually takes, but it never forms the same deep taproot, so the tree stands less firmly in storms and dry spells. Seed gives a sturdier home tree. In a pot, either works.

Growing moringa in a pot vs in the ground

People ask “how big does a moringa plant grow?” because it surprises them. Left alone in the ground, it can grow several metres in its first year and reach 10 metres or more, with soft, brittle wood. A pot keeps it small. Here’s how the two compare.

A cut plastic drum with 6 to 8 holes drilled in the base, raised on two bricks, works well on a roof. Don’t use a pot smaller than about 40 litres for a plant you want to keep; the roots fill a small pot in one summer and the tree starts to yellow and drop leaves.

In the ground, choose the sunniest spot you have. Moringa is a tree of hot, dry plains, native to the sub-Himalayan belt of north-west India and Pakistan, and 45°C summers in Multan or Hyderabad suit it perfectly as long as the soil drains. The quickest way to kill it is a low spot where rainwater stands after a monsoon downpour.

How to take care of moringa plant: water, food, pruning

Water and food

Young plants need regular water until their roots settle, roughly every 2 to 3 days in summer in the ground and often daily in a pot in May and June, but once a ground tree is a year old it copes happily with a weekly soak. In winter, water sparingly; the tree rests and wet, cold roots rot.

Moringa isn’t greedy. Mix a bucket of compost into the planting hole, then add a few handfuls of compost or well-rotted gobar around the base in spring and again before the monsoon. Kitchen compost suits it well, and so does used chai patti dug into the top soil in small amounts; our Zero-Waste Kitchen section has more scrap-to-plant ideas.

Pruning at head height

This is the step most home growers skip, and it’s why so many sohanjna trees are all trunk, with every leaf out of reach. Moringa grows one tall, whippy stem unless you stop it. So stop it.

1. When the young tree is about 1 to 1.2 m tall, cut the top off with clean secateurs, just above a leaf.
2. Three or four side shoots will grow. When each is 30 to 50 cm long, pinch off its tip.
3. Keep pinching tips every few weeks through the growing season. Each pinch makes two or three new shoots and a fuller bush.
4. After each pod season, cut the main branches back by about a third so the canopy stays at head height.
5. Every late winter, before new growth, remove dead, crossing and broken branches.

You can cut an old, overgrown moringa right back to a 1.5 m stump in spring. It resprouts vigorously, and in a few months you have a low, leafy tree again.

Winter and frost

Frost is the enemy. In central and northern Punjab, a hard frost turns leaves black overnight, and young trees can die back to the ground. Older trees usually resprout from the trunk in March. Protect a first-winter tree by throwing an old bedsheet or jute sack over it on clear, still nights when frost is forecast, and remove it in the morning. Pots simply move against a south-facing wall or under a roof. Sindh and Karachi rarely see frost, so there it stays green most of the year.

Harvesting leaves and phali (pods)

You can start picking leaves once the tree is about 1 m tall and growing strongly. Snap off whole leaf stalks (each stalk carries dozens of tiny leaflets) from the top third of the branches, and strip the leaflets off at home. Picking tips also works as pruning, so regular harvest keeps the tree bushy. Never take more than a third of the leaves at once.

Ground trees usually flower in their first or second year: sprays of creamy-white, sweet-smelling flowers, often in late winter to spring in Punjab, sometimes again after the monsoon. The pods follow. Pick phali young, when they’re about as thick as a finger and snap cleanly; old pods turn woody and stringy. For cooking and freezing pods and flowers, see sohanjna pods and phool.

What you do with the leaves is a kitchen question, covered in moringa leaves, powder and cautions and moringa powder in daily food. The pregnancy caution sits in those posts. Grow the tree here; read those before you eat it.

Did you know? Moringa is called the “horseradish tree” in English because its root smells like horseradish. And crushed moringa seeds have long been used to settle mud out of cloudy river water. The name “drumstick” comes from the pods, of course.

Pests: the hairy caterpillar problem

You’ll probably meet the moringa hairy caterpillar. In the warm months, masses of brown, hairy caterpillars cluster on the trunk in the daytime and climb up at night to strip the leaves. Bad attack? Bare tree in days.

1. Check the trunk and branch forks every morning in summer and after the monsoon starts.
2. Wearing rubber gloves, scrape clusters into a bucket of water with a squirt of washing-up liquid, or brush them off with an old broom.
3. Pick off any leaves carrying egg clusters.
4. Knock off aphids on new shoots with a strong spray of water.

A tree that’s been stripped usually grows its leaves back within a few weeks. Don’t reach for poison sprays: you’ll be eating these leaves, and bees work the flowers. Keep the ground under the tree clear of fallen leaves so caterpillars have fewer places to hide.

Moringa growing questions