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!

Fascinating Video on Vetiver

I have a number of vetivers in my collection, and I grow it, so I was pleased to see Aura Cacia (they sell essential oils and blends) has a mini-documentary on the growing and harvesting of vetiver on the island of Madagascar. Madagascar vetiver has a soft and warm, nutty profile, with some lovely dark chocolate undertones and a whiff of smoke. Really nice. Here's the link to the short video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OISG1gzdthk
Disclosure:  I don't work for Aura Cacia and I received nothing from them for mentioning the video, too bad for me!

Vetiver Harvest

First (very small) Vetiver Harvest!

My little 8" bundle of vetiver plants from Alberto at Agriflora Tropicals is now about 4 feet tall and 6 months old! The poor plants were becoming quite rootbound, so I felt it was time to divvy then up, put some in the garden to grow freely, and the others in a bigger pot with fresh soil. I didn't want to kill any part of the plant in order to harvest the fragrant roots, and the roots are too young yet, anyway. Or so I thought.

But there were so many roots at the bottom of the pot that I had to trim them off while repotting, so I rinsed them and dried them. Young though they are, they smell fabulous! Real vetiver, hard to beat that in the summer heat. I'll be making a sachet out of these....