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In less than 2 months, the small Kratom plant that I purchased in July has grown at an amazing rate.  It is easily 3 times larger than it was since my previous post, even taking into consideration my fervent pruning.  I have harvested at least 30 leaves thus far, dispelling the claims that a Kratom plant must be grown for several years before it can be successfully clipped.
I have my plant hanging in a northwestern facing window, not for any other reason besides it is the only window in which my cat cannot reach and devour it.  Nevertheless, it has grown very quickly, even though it only gets heavy sunlight in the afternoon hours.  Being able to grow a Kratom plant this quickly in the Northeast leads me to believe that anyone with a window and water can can do the same with relative ease.

If you are contemplating the purchase of a plant I highly recommend it, although, maybe not from one of the more popular and expensive vendors.  While my plant is from a popular vendor, I have posthumously read very many positive reviews of people buying their plants off of Ebay.  I would also recommend buying a smaller plant, as they grow so quickly, a larger plant is not worth the extra $20 to $50.

In my next post about this plant, I plan to post a quick guide on pruning and harvesting Kratom.  As you can see from the photo, it can grow horizontally faster than it does vertically, which can be controlled with pruning.  Had I known more about pruning this plant from the beginning, it would easily be a foot taller now.  While it is so easy to do, very little information exists online.

Well, apparently, KratomForum.com is no more—it’s quite difficult to actually believe. The Kratomforum was run by Speciosa, and allegedly, the closure was inadvertently caused by the vendor taking a vacation. This supposedly caused an influx of Kratom shipments from Canada, raising a red flag with customs, then the FDA, and various other possibilities that may or may not be true. If you are interested in the source material for these conjectures, which for all I know are totally false, checkout this link.

To be honest, I hadn’t visited the forums in months, and was heading over there to conduct some research for the new Kratom Plateau Forum. In fact, I just finished the previous blog post before I was even aware of the closure. Good timing to start a forum, but I would scrap the idea in a second if it meant I could just have a cached version of the site to save for reference. I was depressed at the thought of losing such a magnificent wealth of information; the user polls alone were surely a priceless resource for so many people—myself definitely included. In any event, I sincerely hope that everyone over at Speciosa is doing well.
To reiterate, the new Kratom Plateau Forum was supposed to be a long term hobby of mine, I envisioned months, if not years, with only a handful of close friends and users; but if anyone is interested in participating, please let me know. I have always believed there was a niche for a small Kratom forum, without the heavy-handed moderation, and run independently of the Kratom vendors. In addition, so many posts on Kratomforum were not helping the cause and deeply worried me concerning the future of this great plant. Nevertheless, these are trivial concerns and I am sad to see the forum gone.
If anyone has any ideas to build a small forum, has any recommendations whatsoever, or just wants to get involved–please let me know.

For anyone interested, I just wanted to post a link to the KratomPlateau forums.  It’s not much yet, and definitly in the preliminary stages, but I wanted to pass the info on to the many people who email me with questions.

Due to an influx of spam, I lost many, if not all of the recent questions and comments left for me in various blog posts.  If I did not respond, if your comment has been erased, I sincerely apologize.  I am certain the creation of the forum will prevent this from happening again, so please feel free to hit me up with any questions.

Also, thanks to everyone for all the great comments and questions before they were inadvertently wiped out.  Many were so thorough, nice, and interesting, it still bothers me they were lost so easily.

It’s not much to look at, but my excitement was not diminished by the small size of my new Kratom plant.  Supposedly, a plant this age (my guess is it’s a several month old cutting) should double in size in roughly 2 months; and so begins my weekly grow log.  My plant, pictured to the left, is a clone of the popular Rifat strain, which is the only one, to my knowledge, that has been tested in various research studies and found to be especially strong.  I almost purchased the less popular Bumblebee strain; however, the Bumble clone is generally described as a bit weaker than the Thai Rifat.  To begin, I have already learned 3 interesting facts about this plant:

• It requires constant and high humidity: with my air conditioner unintentionally working to dry the surrounding air, some leaves have cracked, forming very small tears. Since I have raised the humidity, no further cracking has occurred, and the leaves look much glossier, almost similar to oily appearance of poison ivy. To raise the humidity, I placed peat moss over the soil, and have been continually misting the plant; as long as this is done in moderation it will ensure a humid environment without threatening root rot; although, I might setup a humidifier sometime in the future.

• Cats like Kratom plants, so do not leave plants where they are freely accessible to feline friends. My cat almost immediately began chewing the leaves upon unpacking the plant.

• Kratom is not as difficult to grow as suggested by some of the older reports circulating on the web. It has only been 4 days since the arrival of my plant and it has already sprouted a new set of leaves; which is remarkable considering the plant was preoccupied with acclimating to a new environment. As precursory as it may seem, I am confident that maintaining the proper humidity is the only prerequisite above and beyond caring for an easy-to-grow common houseplant.

In summation, I am astonished how fast this plant is growing, especially considering the relatively low humidity.  To better demonstrate this, I will be sure to add new pics and posts every 1-2 weeks.

Also, if anyone has any advice to better my chances of growing this plant successfully, please, please, please, let me know, it would be much appreciated!

Full Spectrum extract, Full Spectrum tincture, Ultra enhanced Indo (UEI), and 250x Kratom extract represent a new breed of Kratom extracts that have just recently become available.  Unlike the standardized extracts of the past, these versions almost completely capture and reproduce the essence of Kratom leaf, but how close are they?   For anyone who has read this blog, you probably know my innate dislike of extracts, not because they don’t work, but because they are cost prohibitive and only assist in the potential vilification of this plant.  Nevertheless, I put together this short introduction of Kratom extracts focusing on why the old ones are worthless, and why the new ones aren’t so bad—but definitely not great.

To really understand why these new extracts are so interesting, we must go back several years, when enhanced Kratom extracts were just entering the market.  Probably the first mass produced extract was commonly known as “enhanced leaf”, which was purportedly active at roughly 1 gram (5x the potency of regular Kratom leaf); of course, it absolutely wasn’t.  And even though Kratom vendors were essentially condensing 5 grams of leaf to produce 1 gram of extract, the result was akin to drinking a decaf espresso—why even bother?  Yes, it was less bulky, and somewhat similar to leaf, but it just could not reproduce the full effects.

Were these extracts simply a scam?   Absolutely not, like everyone in the Kratom community at the time; vendors, wholesalers, and hobbyists alike believed the active alkaloid in the Kratom leaf to be mitragynine.  And, according to the Merck index, mitragynine was supposed to be soluble in alcohol, chloroform, or acetic acid.  The problem was, mitragynine was not the only active alkaloid, and it is almost certainly not even the most important one.  It was not until 2001 that a Japanese research team began to confirm that mitragynine was not the active alkaloid and eventually concluded that another substance, 7-hydroxymitragynine, was; but before this research was widely published in 2005, Kratom sellers had already flooded the market with a barrage of even more expensive, equally ineffective, extracts.

This first wave of extracts is still commonly referred to as the “standardized” range, and typically consists of standardized 5x, 10x, and 15x extractions.  Interestingly, the 15x extract, while much more expensive than the 10x or 5x, was not much more potent, dissuading many consumers, as exemplified in The Ultimate Kratom Comparison Guide.  Basically, the only advantage of these older extracts was that they condensed leaf material, but again, the ill effects far outweighed the cost.  Today, you can still typically find the 15x extract, but the 5x and 10x have been rendered obsolete by a new breed of fortified extracts.

Today, the new extracts, such as Ultra Enhanced Indo and the Full Spectrum Extract are almost reproducing the effects of pure leaf—but still not completely. From reading various observations, reports, and polls, roughly 65% of Kratom consumers score the newer extracts at about a 9 out of 10; while about 35% actually prefer the newer extracts over raw leaf.  These new “fortified” extracts are obviously the result of a more sophisticated extraction technique that revolves around a better understanding of the varying alkaloids within the plant.  But still, roughly 3/4ths of all Kratom consumers prefer raw leaf (thai, bali, indo, malaysion, etc.) to any extract, obviously, something still missing.