You'll find a list of all my blog posts in the blog archive.
Sweetgrass.
Submitted by Blog - Henriette on 23 May, 2006 - 10:00
Blog categories:
Botanical name:
Oooh. I found lots of sweetgrass.
Day before day before yesterday, on a "let's see what we can find" tour, one of my students bent down to check 'that white flower'. Which was in fact a grass. And when I checked it out, that grass was a sweetgrass, Hierochloe sp.
Which I've seen a few times, but never in this abundance. Now I know where to look for it: it grew very close to water.
Heavenly scent, has sweetgrass. Very strong scent of vanilla.
--
I've grown it in my garden, a few years ago, but the problem with growing grasses in your garden is, you pull them up as weeds, sooner or later.
Comments
Do you think it could
Do you think it could tolerate conditions in southern Louisiana?
USDA's plants database says
USDA's plants database says "nope".
i'm attempting to grow
i'm attempting to grow sweetgrass from seed for the first time. we'll see...i know of a native american healer who has it growing in her yard close by...here's hoping! i love the smell.
If I were to decide to grow
If I were to decide to grow it again, I'd put it into a container. That way I'd be less likely to pull it up as a weed.
I grow sweetgrass in a
I grow sweetgrass in a raised bed by itself which keeps it from spreading and taking over the rest of my flower beds because it WILL do that. I get between 40 and 50 braids from it, twice a year, harvesting it in mid-summer, and just before the first frost. I don't sell it, although I could very easily, but prefer to use it to make baskets to gift away, and sometimes giving away the braids. It's a wonderful incense also.
Ah. So my "pull it up as a
Ah. So my "pull it up as a weed" was actually, in a twisted way, the right thing to do? Thanks, heart woman!
A question for Heart Woman:
A question for Heart Woman: What are the dimensions of your raised beds for sweetgrass cultivation? We just received a dozen very nice plugs with great roots. The supplier instructed us to place each plug in an individual pot for a month. We live in Virginia where the climate is a bit mor mild than further north. We wonder if we could shorten the time in the pots and get the plants into the ground sooner. The back of our small yard is fairly damp through the summer and I have placed a gravel channel under the mulch. It works well and my feeling is that this area would be perfect for a raised bed with sweetgrass. I like the idea of the separation a raised bed offers. We are moving to northern Vermont in a few years and we will be taking our plants with us to repopulate the land up there. Thanks.
Greg Whiteraven