Saturday, October 6, 2012

Vetiver Harvest and a Slithery Visitor

I transplanted my vetiver (which started as 6 bundles, and had grown to 10, now 15!) to the harshest spot in my garden for the final phase of the Vetiver Dune Test. I was amazed how quickly it grew in our sandy, alkaline, salty soil. It's about 5 feet tall now, and flowering:

Vetiver Grass in Flower/Seed

It did marvelously well as a wind break for my other plants. Ginger loves vetiver as a neighbor! It was time to harvest one of the bundles of grass and see how the roots did (and how they smelled).


Vetiver Roots, washed
 This is just the smallest bundle of the 15 growing. The rest will remain in the ground to see how it does over longer time periods. These roots were about 8 inches long, so I'm pretty impressed. They really held the ground, too, and it took 3 intense washings to clean them!


The roots smell great, though not as strongly scented as the vetiver grown in a pot in richer, more acidic soil. This bundle is heading for a sachet. Overall, I'm very impressed with vetiver as a sturdy dune plant.  The grass itself is great for weaving/basketry.  They make mats of the grass in India, and I can attest to their strength and durability.  Vetiver is useful, strong, beautiful, and smelly. So I'm giving vetiver 5 stars as an all-around terrific plant.

While I was working, a curious little baby snake found a nice curling up spot on a cool ceramic dish. He was only about 5cm long. So cute!

Have a great weekend!

2 comments:

  1. That's very interesting with the Vetiver, congrats with your success. I love plants that smell nice! Cool little snake, love the orange band; S for snake or is that an eight? Do you know what it is? Best. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. It's a hatchling ringneck snake, Diadophis punctatus. They are fairly common here, but it's kind of weird to see them during the day.

    ReplyDelete