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Rev

Vetiver grass

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Ive known about this stuff for 10 years or more now

and i still am yet to find little fault with it

http://www.vetiver.org/

ive bought their CD's and booklets and its got loads of great info off their site

it would be the most underutilised yet most useful plant i know of

i use it for mulch

it grows around my evaporation trench and im expanding it year by year to surround the whole thing

it uses the effluent and the abundant heat and sunshine over summer to create a fair bit of attarctive, durable mulch for pathways

its a great way to recycle those nutrients and water safely back into the yard

its really suited to summer rainfall patterns mostly

but easily takes the frost here, though it stops growing over winter

its indestructible - cept for roundup. everything needs an achilles heel to be safe to use...

more

http://www.ybe.com.au/landscape.htm

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/20...supergrass.html

http://www.ldd.go.th/EFiles_project/IT-GIS...s%20Natural.htm

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ive heard of the weed thing but most grass in australia today is Monto, a sterile cultivar

sourced from the brisbane botanic gardens

and as noted its VERY susceptible to glyphosate.

a burn and a spray would kill all adults

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Lemongrass is fairly handy stuff for some of those purposes too, good to have a few clumps where the biocycle etc overflows to. Doesn't last too long as mulch, somewhere around but a lil shorter than sugarcane mulch.. but then I don't mulch nearly as deeply as some people tell me I have to (three feet of mulch is probably nice if you a> own a trailer b> water with a firetruck c> have anything you could call "subsoil moisture"). Lemongrass doesn't seed either, or send runners or regen from roots or bulbs. Have to look into vetiver though cheers for the idea.

GD

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i use lemon grass too

but its not as cold hardy, it does frost back

and this has a far deeper root system

id offer slips but i want to be sure i have this monto variety b4 speading it about

i may have to got to the bris botanic gdns as ive had no luck in replies from the proffessors involved in the qld work

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don't get a match near it. was doing some flame weeding and the flame merely licked a dead blade. It travelled back to the plant within a second and the whole green thing went up in a flash.

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doesnt kill it though

but it can be useful if you want to

like blady grass the new growth is soft and palatable so you can graze it out (blady grass = poor mans oats) or give it a weak spray

Edited by Rev

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didn't mean to detract from it's benefits in any way. just a warning not to plant real close to buildings etc as it is a major fire hazard. we were going to use it to stabilise a bank behind the shed, but ot only 1m from the eves that is a fire hazard.

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