The sweet vanilla scent is produced by the chemical coumarin, and it thought to evoke a calm, meditative relaxation. The fragrance of this grass can be used to scent everything from linen closets to candles and bath salts with its soothing perfume. Producing stands of long satiny green ribbons that should be cut to prevent the plant from dying back, sweetgrass can be used to scent linens and clothing when dried, or tightly braided and burned as incense. In Europe during the Medieval period, sweetgrass was scattered across the floors of cathedrals to scent the air.
The cut grass can be woven into hats, baskets and mats. Medicinally, it can be infused into a tea to calm windchapped skin and sunburn. It grows quickly and can be harvested twice a year or more by cutting, never pulling up from the roots. The plant prefers fertile, evenly moist to damp soil and full sun, and will tolerate part shade in the southern States. This configuration provided two conditions that helped the plants survive winter, which included sustained events of subfreezing weather down to as low as 17 degrees.
Straw bales protected the plants from the harsh temperatures and at the same time generated their own heat from their decomposition in the process. The pallets "hovering" over the tops of the plants created a micro environment like a terrarium, helped from the heat from the straw bales. The pallet's lattice protected from winds, snow and cold temperatures.
Do not bother tilling, because there will be dormant weed or grass seeds in the soil. Mow any weeds or grass down to ground level, and water. Then, add one inch of chicken manure and roll out the black plastic on top, and weigh down the edges.
Keep the plastic on for weeks, then remove for weeds to allow any dormant weed or grass seeds to sprout. Then, mow, wet, apply more chicken manure and cover again for weeks.
Then, remove the plastic again, and if more weed seeds sprout, repeat until no more weed or grass seeds sprout. If you use a knife or scissors to cut your sweetgrass, the plants will recover within three hours. If you pull them out by their roots, it takes three months for the plants to regrow the root-leaf shoots.
You can see the base of a lot of Canadian-harvested braids, dried roots that show that these were harvested by pulling instead of cutting, which is very damaging to the plants. There are many methods to dry your sweetgrass and how your dry your sweetgrass has a direct relationship to the strength and quality of the scent you end up with. Think turning grape juice into wine. So there are at least three potential outcomes for the scent of your leaves, nice strong fragrant sweetgrass, dried sweetgrass with little or no scent, and sweetgrass that started heating up like compost during the drying process to produce a wet-dog smell.
My favorite method is the freeze-dry, where you cut the leaves the evening before and wrap it in paper towel or a cloth towel, and freeze it overnight. Then when the morning is warm, spread it out in a thin layer in the sun on newspaper, and turn it every 15 minutes for the first two hours then every hour until sunset, or until dried.
If grass still needs further drying at the end of the first day, rewrap and put back in the freezer, and finish drying on the next warm, dry morning, and turn once an hour until fully dried. The leaf surface goes from shiny to dull when dried. At room temp. Will keep its fragrance for the longest time frozen.
If kept at room temperature NEVER store in plastic , because any moisture still in the leaves can cause mold to grow and ruin the dried grass. Wrap in paper and store in an airy place indoors, not an enclosed space, or outdoors in a shed. This is the best freezer to store dried sweetgrass, made by Sears, with manual defrost and very quiet.
Has a drain plug for defrosting. The current China tariff issues, or the Corona Virus, may cause the smaller sizes to disappear and may increase the price of all of the models. Kmart carries some of these and had a few on sale in May , and you may be able to order them directly from Sears on line. These chest freezers are essential if you are going to go into sweetgrass production on any kind of scale.
Kenmore chest freezers are available in many sizes-- 3. At the "warmest" setting, keeps -8 deg. Viable sweetgrass seeds are rarely produced by the plants, but if you do find viable seeds in the future, or try to sprout what looks like seeds that you plants produce in spring, it takes three years to get a plant the same size as the plug you are ordering, because the seedlings need to grow a root system before they start sending up many leaf shoots. In May, the plants may flower and produce what looks like seeds, and if you want to cut them off when they appear, that will save the plant energy to make more leaves for you.
Unfortunately, live sweetgrass plants themselves growing in a yard, have absolutely no mosquito-repelling ability. Instead, for your yards, attract the mosquito-eating birds--A reliable non-chemical solution to mosquitoes , is placing 6 foot tall, one inch by one inch wood bean-poles spaced about 15 feet apart in an open area of the yard, so that the mosquito-eating birds will have perches to hunt from.
Our yard has been mosquito-free every summer, since we set up those bird perches many years ago. Sweetgrass makes a lovely container plant. Sweetgrass is used in prayer, smudging, and purifying ceremonies and is regarded as a sacred plant by the Native Americans.
It is not well known that it was also sacred to early Europeans and is still used in churches on festival days. Sweet-grass is considered an aromatic herb , but the scent is strong only when moistened or burned. As the grass dries the fragrance intensifies. When burned it does not produce an open flame but smolders.
Just as the sweet scent is attractive to people, it is also attractive to good spirits. Native Americans often burned the grass at the beginning of a prayer or to attract positive energies.
Hierochloe odorata. Characteristics : One of our sacred Native American herbs, Sweetgrass is extremely easy to grow and can tolerate minor periods of drought.
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