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SWEETGRASS
(Hierochlöe odorata) - also called Bison grass and zubrowka.

Organically grown plants & dried bulk leaves.
No pesticides, sprays, or chemical fertilizers, making them safer for your health,
for baskets or braids.

One sweetgrass dried bundle, free with plant orders.

All of our plants are guaranteed to arrive alive and thrive!

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Redwood City Seed Company, Box 361, Redwood City, CA 94064.
orders by phone (650) 325-7333
or FAX (650) 325-4056

We offer two kinds of live plants,
the Regular (left) and the Supershamanistic™ (right), photographed on June first. Plants shown, are in 2-3/4" pots, and the Supershamanistic™ is a more robust plant, growing three times faster, and looks like it is exploding out of the pot. We can get 3 cuts a year from our Supershamanistic™ plants, but only one cut from the Regular.

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Ordering your sweetgrass plants ,
maps show suggested ship dates in green:

Next three ship-dates for 2009 are: July 6 & 20, August 7
Please place your order for a particular ship-date, and the deadline is
4 PM California Time, the Saturday prior to the ship-date.

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ORDERING: We dig and ship plants at least once a month, year around, and by looking at the ship-date maps, you can order the plants for the right month for your area.

All plants are shipped via the Post Office, so if you have a Post Office Box, that address is preferred.

When plants first arrive, soak the roots in a bowl of water for a minute.

PRICES

--SUPERSHAMANISTIC ™ sweetgrass plants $12 each, 3/$24, 6/$36, 10/$55, 15/$80, 20/$100, 30/$145, 40/$195, 60/$295, 80/$395, 100/$495, 200/$995. Prices include Priority mail via the post office. Plants grow about 3-5 times faster than the regular strain. The dramatic increased speed of growth, is a natural genetic difference in grasses called "polyploidy" which is not caused by fertilizers. This plant is not a hybrid and is the fastest-growing natural strain in North America, discovered growing in our beds many years ago. There is no difference in the scent of either strain. If you want Express mail delivery, please add prices below.

EXPRESS MAIL DELIVERY. Suggested for plants shipped in summer, especially to Texas, the South and the Southwest. Express mail is also suggested if you live more than 100 miles from a major airport or metropolitan area. Optional shipment via Express Mail if you add the following: $25 for the first plant, and $1 for each additional plant.

---DRIED ORGANIC-GROWN LOOSE LEAVES. Harvested from our own production beds, loose dried leaves, for basket-making or other uses. Average length 12-16 inches, and a 1/2 pound is a bundle about three inches in diameter when firmly packed. One pound has about 4,200 individual leaves, with 90% of the leaves one foot long or more, and a maximum length of 2 feet. It takes 7 pounds of fresh sweetgrass to make one pound of dried, and one dried pound is about 24 braid's worth. PRICE: 1/2 pound $40, One pound $80. Order now, for July to August 2009 harvests. Limited amounts available. Prices include priority mail via the post office to USA, Canada and Mexico. Overseas customers, please ask for the shipping costs for loose leaves.

---DRIED ORGANIC-GROWN LEAVES, FOR BUNDLES. Harvested from our own production beds, for making bundles, average length 6-10 inches. PRICE: 1/2 pound $30, One pound $60. Order now, for July to August 2009 harvests. Limited amounts available. Prices include priority mail via the post office to USA, Canada and Mexico. Overseas customers, please ask for the shipping costs for loose leaves.

California customers ordering either plants or dried leaves, please add 8-1/4% sales tax if you live outside San Mateo Co., or 9-1/4% if you live within San Mateo County.

If you are ordering 20 or fewer plants for delivery in spring or summer, it is best to plant each plug into 8" diameter plastic pots in potting soil, keeping them in the shade for a week, and then introduce them to morning sun and then as much afternoon sun as they can take.

Planting sweetgrass in the pots first, allow you to easily move them around the garden, until you find the perfect sun/shade conditions that the plants like best.

Let them grow for at least month in the pots before you plant them out into the garden. In the North, they will want sun all day long. In the Southwest, South and Southern California, they will absolutely need some afternoon shade.

Click here to see how a plant grows month-by-month, and the plant in a few months will fill the 8" pot. When they've grown to a large size, you can plant them out into your garden, spacing each about one foot apart. Sweetgrass is very fast-growing in the summer.

Plants ordered in autumn can be directly planted into the garden---just make sure to put them in an area that is free of other grass weeds, and carefully mark their spots, so you can find them next spring.

Plants are shipped via the post office in cardboard boxes, priority mail, or express mail.

STATES and Territories where our plants have been successfully grown, since 1990: Every state in the USA plus the US Virgin Islands!

California Nursery Stock License 1323.001, family-owned business established in 1972.

This web site contains the most detailed information ever compiled about sweetgrass, over 12,000 words and when printed out is 32 pages long.

Copyright © 1992, 2000, 2003 - 2009 by Sue & Craig Dremann,
a 51% woman-owned business, established in 1972.

Anyone lifting any sentences from this web site, and reprinting, or posting them on the web, or distributing them as an electronic file (like PDF) without written permission, including for educational use, agrees to pay on demand, liquidated damages of $100 per sentence per day. Leaf Nutrient level chart, the sweetgrass regrowing chart and the sweetgrass drying charts are each twenty sentences-worth of liquidated damages.

TRADEMARK NOTICE: Please note that "Supershamanistic" is a trademark exclusively owned by the Redwood City Seed Company, and the purchase of plants from our company, does not give any permission for buyers, to commercially utilize the terms "Super" or "Supershamanistic" or any of our descriptive information, or use of any of our growing or other information or images, without a written license agreement, and the payment of an annual license fee.

Sweetgrass (Hierochlöe odorata) --- seed stalk, life-size, very important for positive identification.

DESCRIPTION & HISTORY of SWEETGRASS is a winter-hardy aromatic perennial grass, normally found growing in rich, moist soil from Alaska to Newfoundland in full sun, and is also native to northern Europe. The peoples of both Europe and North America consider this plant sacred and sweetgrass plays an important part in sacred ceremonies on both continents. The leaves are dried and made into braids and burned as a vanilla-scented incense, and used to make baskets which retain the vanilla-like scent for many years. Sweetgrass is a high-yielding grass, when fertilized, cultivated and managed, can produce up to 65,000 dried braids per acre.

Sweetgrass is also called Bison grass and zubrowka, plus there are many different names in the various native American languages, like we'nuskwûn in Menomini, or the Mamaceqtaw language from Wisconsin and Michigan (from Ethnobotany of the Menomini by H.H.Smith) and Wekusko by Canadian indigenous people. (>>>see the Seven Questions about sweetgrass, at the end of this web page).

Please Note: There are several other species of grass that have been called "Sweetgrass" including a South Carolina grass (Muhlenbergia filipes), that is also used to make baskets, plus a shorter European weedy grass called sweet vernal grass. Our Sweetgrass (Hierochlöe odorata) has a vanilla scent, and the long leaves are used to make dried braids and woven into baskets.

The map below, shows about 30 species of Hierochlöe Sweetgrass that grow around the world, even in the tropics at high elevation, and on every continent including Antartica.



Sweetgrass or Hierochloe species around the world. Data from Index Kewensis.

The Mystery of the Sweetgrass on two continents. Sweetgrass is what is called a "circumpolar" plant, which means it grows in both the North American and European continents around the Arctic circle.

There are at least three possibilities, how sweetgrass got to North America:
(1.) plants spread across both continents when Eastern North America and Europe were joined as a single continent, (2.) live plant were carried by Native American peoples when they crossed over the Asian/Alaskan land bridge, or (3.) live plants were carried in boats in prehistoric times from northern Europe to North America up the Saint Lawrence river to the Great Lakes region. A study of the sweetgrass genetics in the future, could give us an answer to this mystery.

Since plants do not normally produce viable seeds, it could only occur on both continents by these three methods.

Possible route from Europe to North America for sweetgrass, 11,000-12,500 years ago. (Globe from graphicmaps.com)

Perhaps sweetgrass arrived in North America 11,000-12,500 years ago from Europe, with the Clovis or Folsom peoples, first introduced to Newfoundland and then planted around the Great Lakes. Genetic mapping of the North American sweetgrass populations may help trace back the peoples moving across the Atlantic, bring their live sweetgrass plants with them.

In any case, sweetgrass is the only sacred plant shared by peoples of both Europe and North America, and in Europe it is called Holy grass, and has dried leaves have been strewn on the floors of churches. In North America, sweetgrass is called "Hair of the Mother Earth" and is one of the four sacred herbs, which includes sage (Artemisia species and Salvia species), cedar and tobacco.

There's probably no truly "wild" sweetgrass populations in the world, because, most of the populations of the North American and European sweetgrass may have been "cultivated" and selected for the length of their leaves over the last 10,000+ years of human/sweetgrass interactions.

Of course there are wild stands growing in the wild, but when you take a careful look at those plants, they may actually be remnants of a "garden" within an ancient Native American village site, still growing where they were originally planted hundreds, to thousands of years ago.

Sweetgrass plants have been selected by humans to be cut at least twice a year, otherwise the unusually long leaves can smother the plant. A similar form of human selection of another wild plant, to make a particular part of the plant grow unusually long, can be seen in the selection of the Saffron crocus, whose stigma is harvested for the spice "saffron." The saffron stigma is now so abnormally long, it hangs outside of the petals.

The other indicator that sweetgrass has had a close association with humans, is that it has lost its ability to normally produce viable seeds. Garlic is like that, for example, in that the plant do not bother to produce any seeds, since humans have been replanting them every year from cloves. Plants that are reproduced by humans by plant parts like roots or bulbs, instead of seeds, over thousands of years, stop bothering to produce viable seeds. The loss of viable seed production, is a good indicator of a plant's close association with humans for at least 2,000-5,000 year, or longer.

No studies of the genetics of the "wild" sweetgrass populations have yet been done, but I predict that when such a study is completed, then we will be able to follow the movement and travel of the sweetgrass plants in association with humans. Also, the mapping of the existing "wild" stands on North America will probaly show that the plant is linked directly with ancient village sites, and has not extended itself very far outside of those villages.

You can see a mapping of some of the potential village sites in Colorado, using sweetgrass as the indicator at http://www.ecoseeds.com/villagesearch.html. The website shows sweetgrass location maps that were generated by the Herbarium at Colorado State. There is an example of one site, where sweetgrass was found in June, 1898 by C. Crandall in Conejos County, where US Highway 285 crosses the Conejos River, at Lat. 37.1012, Long -106.0067, Elevation 7,799 ft.

The US highway Route 285 follows an ancient Indian trail, and the Conejos river is still considered one of the best fishing rivers in the Southwest, so the spot where sweetgrass was found in 1898--where an ancient trail crosses a river--may be a potential Indian village site where sweetgrass was originally planted.

When the Europeans first started plowing up the Native American sweetgrass beds, the plant was so common between 1800 and 1890 in parts of North America , sweetgrass was considered a weed by the farmers trying to sow a wheat crop in the middle of a thousand year old sweetgrass bed.

Then, plant them in eight-inch diameter plastic pots in potting soil, and keep in the shade for a week while they establish new roots. Move them into more and more sun, gradually over the next week's time. In the North and Northwest, they will need full sun and in the South, Southeast, Southwest and southern California, they will need afternoon shade.

Planting them first in shallow plastic pot, an "azalea pot" works well, which is a pot that is wider than it is deep, like eight inches across but only 4-6 inches deep. Do not use clay, because they dry out too fast.

This method of growing the plants in shallow containers helps them spread faster and make more leaf growth. The roots will spread horizontally and then grow upwards to make more shoots

About a month or two of growing in the pot, they will have filled up the pot, then you can plant them out into the garden, spacing plants from one to three feet apart, or into a planter box, which we have a design for below

CLICK HERE TO SEE PHOTOS from our month-by-month growing of a single plant. A single plant is shown, in an 8-inch diameter pot, with two foot long leaves, ready to harvest. Easily grown in a pot or planter box.

REDWOOD SWEETGRASS PLANTER that you can build in 15 minutes
Build your own redwood Sweetgrass Planter Box, in 15 minutes, six feet long, which is the proper size for six to ten plants, for less than $10 in materials. Click here for details and design information.

LARGE-SCALE PLANTING, using weed stop fabric

ABOVE: A bed-layout for large-scale braid-harvesting.

The "Weed-barrier" fabric can be ordered from McConkey Company in Sumner, Washington, (800) 426-8124 and comes in 4 foot and 6 foot widths, and the rolls are 300 feet long.

The 2004 prices and shipping weights for this fabric was: 4 foot wide $55.32 and weighs 35 pounds, and the 6 foot wide $75.43 and 46 pounds, with UPS costs extra. This fabric lasts 15-20 years in coastal California, so is an excellent investment. You roll out the fabric and leave an eight-inch gap where the sweetgrass plants grow, between the rows of fabric.

You use the four feet wide fabric if you are going to grow two foot long braids, and the six foot wide fabric, if you are planning to harvest three foot long braids. Space the plants one foot apart in the row for two foot long braids, and two feet apart in each row, for three foot long braids.

The garden area where the sweetgrass is to be planted, absolutely must be well-drained and not clayey. Check by digging the area up, watering it, and then the next day, take a hand full of soil in one hand, and squeeze it into a ball. When you open your hand, the ball should break up, at least a little bit, and not stay as a solid ball of clay. If it doesn't break up, add coarse sand and/or perlite until it does.

Excessive compost can also be a very big problem, because when it breaks down, it can create waterlogged soil.

Sweetgrass is very, very fussy about having waterlogged roots, so we do not recommend adding fine compost to beds. It is better to add perlite, because that material always stays well-drained. You can add compost, but only add the coarse stuff that stays on top of a 1/8" mesh screen.

Below are three pictures, showing the varying effects of waterlogged soil on the plants and roots. Plants in photos were all planted at the same time, and show the severe effects of having waterlogged soil.

Totally waterlogged soil, few roots and only one stem per square inch.

Partially waterlogged soils, more roots and 4-10 stems per sq. inch

Perfect sweetgrass soil, thick root mass and more than 12 stems per sq. inch. Look at that dense root-mass, that is what you want to see.

WATERING should be done thoroughly, keeping plants constantly moist but not overwhelmingly wet. Never let the soil surface dry out completely, as dryness or drought is the major cause of death of a sweetgrass patch. The leaves will curl when the soil is getting excessively dry, and if still green, can revive with a thorough watering.

FULL SUN is best for plants that are grown north of New Jersey, Iowa, Colorado, and central California. When growing in the South, Midwest, Southwest and southern California, we suggest keeping plants in part shade, especially in an area out of the afternoon sun from 3 P.M. onwards. Do not grow the plant indoors.

FERTILIZER is needed at least once a month during the growing season, but we do not recommend chemical fertilizers because they have the possibility of"burning" the plants.

We recommend using both bone meal and blood meal. Sweetgrass plants are heavy feeders, and fertilizing the plants is very important for growing into strong plants.

When you first plant your plants, if you are planting in pots, add two tablespoons each of blood meal and bone meal, and mix them into the potting soil before you plant your plants.

Repeat the blood meal and bone meal every month during the growing season, by scattering the fertilizers around each plant, and watering in. Liquid fish fertilizers can be used, when you need to get a rapid green-up in the plants.

When planting sweetgrass in a row, sprinkle one cup of bone meal per 6 foot row, which is long enough for 6-10 sweetgrass plants.

Then add one cup of blood meal per six foot row. Mix the fertilizers with the top 4-5 inches of the soil.


Plant your sweetgrass plants in the row, spacing each plant 7-12 inches apart.

We do not recommend other organic fertilizers. For sweetgrass, please do not use cow, horse, goat, bat, chicken or bunny manures, alfalfa meal, kelp meal, worm castings or fine compost. Fine compost is especially bad for sweetgrass, because when the compost breaks down, it makes the soil too waterlogged for the sweetgrass roots to thrive well, but coarse compost that stays on top of a 1/8" mesh screen may work well.

The plugs that we offer have been organically grown and not sprayed with any herbicides or fungicides. We fertilize with five pounds of blood meal and five pounds of bone meal per 100 square feet, every month during the growing season. Also, once or twice a year, we add five pounds of the mineral Potassium sulfate or Sulfate of Potash per 100 square feet.

We always apply the bone meal first, and since it is white, acts as a white background on the soil, so that the blood meal can be evenly sprinkled on top.

The plants will sometimes show when they have a need for the different fertilizers, for example when the leaves start turning yellow, adding iron and nitrogen in the form of blood meal, will usually cure that problem and green them back up within a week or two. Or liquid fish fertilizers can also help.

The lack of phosphorus, which is supplied by bone meal, can be clearly seen when several inches of the bases of the leaves or the leaf tips start turning purple, like in the photo of the Canadian wildcrafted braids show, below.


Showing when you need to fertilize with bone meal, when a purple color appears at the leaf base.

Dried wildcrafted braids shown above, with purple color at thier root ends, showing mild and severe need for phosphorus, which is supplied by bone meal, and is cured by feeding the plants once a month. Notice that these braids were harvested by pulling out by the roots, which is not recommended---instead cut them and leave a few inches of stem above the ground.

The Wildcrafter's sweetgrass fertilizer bag. For sweetgrass wildcrafters, I am suggesting that an organic fertilizer carrying bag be made, that can be easily taken to the woods. For every hand full of sweetgrass that is harvested, I am recommending that a hand-full of a 50% bone meal and 50% blood meal mix, be sprinkled around the plants.

REFERENCE MINERAL LEVELS for SWEETGRASS LEAVES -- an example of the normal mineral levels of a healthy sweetgrass leaf.

If you are growing a large stand of sweetgrass, and you want to check the mineral levels of your leaves, you can compare them with our reference analysis below, that the Soil & Plant Lab in Santa Clara, California (408) 737-0330 ran for us.

Our reference level, is for healthy plants coming out of dormancy in March 2009, and were conducted on dried blades of sweetgrass and passing them through 40 mesh screen, and then testing for the levels of different elements.

Since this sweetgrass leaf mineral level data is from our own studies and tests (Lab No. 63461), we do not want to see this data posted on any other web sites, or incorporated into any other sweetgrass information anywhere, including by any educational institutions, or in any Federal or State government documents or web sites:

Sweetgrass Leaf Nutrient Reference Levels	Copyright © 2009 Sue & Craig Dremann
Element	Mid-March, healthy sweetgrass leaf analysis
Nitrogen (N)	4.12%
Phosphorus (P)	0.34%
Potassium (K)	1.80%
Calcium	0.46%
Magnesium	0.15%
Sodium	0.23%
Copper	13 ppm
Zinc	31 ppm
Manganese	60 ppm
Iron	102 ppm
Boron	10 ppm

Please, never harvest by pulling up by the roots."Don't uproot the shoots"

If you look at the wildcrafted Canadian braids, they have usually been pulled up by the roots. Harvesting by pulling up by the roots may be a quick way to harvest, but it stops the plant's ability to regrow quickly, whereas cut leaves will start regrowing immediately. Cut the leaves and leave about 2-3 inches of leaf stem above the ground.

Cutting leaves instead of pulling up by the roots, will allow the plants to regrow quickly, and it may be possible to get a second and third, and even a fourth harvest, before autumn. We can get up to three cuttings a year from established plant: early May to mid June, early August, and October just before they go dormant. In summer, the plants grow one to three inches a day!

Harvest Experiment - Cutting vs. Pulling

Photo above shows sweetgrass regrowing two days after our harvest experiment, or in the case of the pulled, only a few spindly stems are seen regrowing. Ours is the first measured experiment ever conducted, to record how fast sweetgrass regrows when cut or pulled.
We took six sweetgrass plants, each with 30 stems all at the same length, and on May 7, 2009, pulled the leaves by the roots from one plant, and cut the others at different lengths---at ground level, one inch, two inches, three inches and four inches.

Two weeks later, a one-foot ruler on the left, showing the pulled plant not regrowing. From left to right, the plants were cut at ground level, one inch, 2", 3" and 4".

The pulled plant may take six months or more to recover, so pulling the leaves instead of cutting when harvesting, looks like it can severely damage your plant and its ability to thrive.

Five weeks later later, a one-foot ruler on the left, showing the pulled plant barely regrowing, compared to the plants that were cut at ground level, one inch, 2", 3" and 4".

After five weeks, comparing pulled vs. cut at ground level.

We will post the measurements below, as the plants regrow.

Harvest length	Days after harvest, for plants to regrow 30 stems, with a minimum of one foot long each.
Pulled up by the roots	...still waiting...
Cut at ground level	40 days
Cut at 1 or 2 inches above ground	35 days
Cut at 3 or 4 inches above ground	33 days

DRYING, YIELDS and BRAID-MAKING. We used to cut our sweetgrass, and lay it on newspapers in the sun, in a layer no thicker than an inch, and turn it every 30 minutes until dry. In dry, hot, low-humidity weather, leaves will dry in about four hours. We have more details about using the freeze-drying and weighing method below. It is easiest to braid the grass when nearly dry, and when less than 0.4 oz. amounts. Store dried leaves in plastic bags to retain their fragrance.

A solid patch of sweetgrass will yield one pound of dried leaves for every 12.5 square feet of bed.

Two tons per acre. One acre solidly planted and properly fertilized could yield 4,000 pounds. or two tons of dried leaves, or about 65,000 braids.

Sweetgrass an "Ecocrop"according to the FAO - Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN - Sweetgrass listed on their web page at http://ecocrop.fao.org/ecocrop/srv/en/cropView?id=6720

If the wholesale price of a wildcrafted braid is $2, then a single acre could yield $130,000 worth of braids, one of the world's most valuable field-crop plants. Growing sweetgrass braids, has a good potential for making additional part-time income.

Harvesting, drying with the Freeze-dry & weighing method, and storage

You can harvest sweetgrass at any time during the growing season. Sweetgrass is an unusual grass, in that each shoot is a single long leaf, that grows upwards until it is about nine inches long, and then it starts bending down until it trails along the ground.

Also, the grass is unusual, in that when it grows long enough to bend, it bends backwards, with the shiny undersides upwards.

You have to take care, once the leaves grow more than nine-inches long, that they do not lay on top of each other, otherwise the lower leaves can get shaded and stop getting light.

Once the leaves grow long enough to start laying down, you may need to gently rake the leaves every week or so, like combing hair, to spread them out a bit, so they do not cover each other so much.

For braids, the leaves are usually harvested when they reach about 16 inches to two feet long, and I have occasionally seen braids three feet long (one meter) from Canada, but they are rare.

In order to harvest three foot long braids, you will need to make a four foot radius circle around each individual plant, which will provide the room for the leaves to lay into as they grow.

Start your drying process during a period of a couple days where you are guaranteed dry weather, where the relative humidity will be low, without any rain or threat of rain. The ideal conditions are below 50% relative humidity. Start cutting the leaves before noon, but after any dew on the leaves, has dried.

We used to dry our loose cut grass in the sun, in layers less than an inch thick, turning the leaves every 30-60 minutes until they start curling and the tips are starting to dry. Then we moved the grasses to the shade, to finish drying, spread thinly on top of newspapers. If you allow the sweetgrass to completely dry in the full sun, you will lose some of the fragrance.

It is a delicate balance, when drying your sweetgrass, between getting the moisture out of the leaves quickly to stop the leaf-fermentation process, and to retain as much of the scent as possible.

Please note that dried sweetgrass leaves are hydroscopic (able to absorb moisture from the air), which means that unless they are stored in plastic, they will absorb a lot of moisture from the air, and the fermentation process can get started again. This hydroscopic ability is probably a survival technique used by the plant to avoid death by drought, where the leaves are able to absorb moisture readily from the air.

FREEZE-DRY & WEIGHING METHOD

Our new FREEZE-DRY & WEIGHING method appears to preserve the leaves, with the strongest scent and darkest green color. Cut the sweetgrass and place the cut-ends down in a paper grocery sack. You can really pack a sack full. Then immediately put the freshly cut sweetgrass in the freezer, and keep it there overnight.

Take the frozen sweetgrass out in the morning and spread it very thinly over 1-2" square or smaller wire mesh screen or chicken wire, laid out on the ground. Let dry in the sun for one or two hours, and grass should be curled up by then. Then put the sweetgrass back into the freezer for two hours, and take it out and dry on the wire with a single sheet of newspaper over it, for a few more hours. Weigh down the newspapers so they do not blow away.

This Freeze-dry method, seems to conserve the scent the best, and keeps the leaves a beautiful dark green color. In fact, the leaves will be so pliable, that you may think that they are still moist, so wrap them in small bundles with newspaper, and put the bundles back into the paper shopping bag and take it indoors.

If there is still moisture in the grass, you can check the next morning, and see if the newspaper feels moist. If so, dry for a few hours more, and wrap in newspaper for a few hours, and check again.

If the grass does not dry in one day, put it back into the paper grocery bag, and put it back into the freezer. Or if the weather changes during the drying process, put the grass back into the freezer.

MIX OF SUN-SHADE-FREEZER method. Or you can use a mixture of sun-shade drying and put the leaves in the freezer overnight. The details are shown in the Sweetgrass Drying Chart below.

CHECKING the DRYING process WITH WEIGHT. Pull two sample of sweetgrass out of the batch you are drying, of the exactly the same weight, at least 4-8 ounces of each, when you first start the drying process, and get a digital scale that can weight down to 1/10th ounce.

Put one sample in the full sun all the time, and the other sample follows along with the bulk of the sweetgrass that you are drying. Periodically weigh the two samples, and the full sun sample will dry first, and stabilize at a certain weight. Then, follow the weight as the other sample is drying, and when that weight stabilizes, your bulk sweetgrass should be fully dried also.

The Sweetgrass Drying Chart below, shows an example of drying sweetgrass in Mid-May, 2009 in central California during 42% daytime relative humidity, with clear skies and 80s daytime temperatures and 60s during the night. Suggested turning-times are listed, and every ten minutes in the first hour of drying is very important in producing the best quality dried sweetgrass.

When turning, always tease apart the clumps of sweetgrass, so the whole batch will dry evenly.

SWEETGRASS DRYING CHART

DAY ONE	Weight	Location
3:00 PM cut	16 oz.	Full sun, turn every 10 min.
3:30 PM	9.7 oz.	Full sun, turn every 10 min.
4:00 PM	8.6 oz.	Full sun, turn every 15 min.
4:30 PM	7.4 oz.	Full sun, turn every 30 min
5:00 PM	7.1 oz.	Start shade, turn every hour
6 PM	6.1 oz.	Shade, turn every hour
7 PM	5.8 oz.	Shade, turn every hour
8 PM	5.8 oz.	Outdoors covered at night with newspaper, or in the freezer
DAY TWO 8 AM	5.6 oz.	Shade & out of freezer, turn every 30 minutes
9 AM	5.3 oz.	Start full sun, and turn every 15 minutes.
10 AM	5.0 oz.	Full sun, turn every 30 min.
11 AM	4.0 oz.	Start shade, turn every hour
12 NOON	3.5 oz.	Shade, turn every hour
1 PM	3.4 oz.	Shade, turn every hour
2 PM	3.4 oz.	Fully dried, ready to store

You can see that one pound of freshly cut sweetgrass, loses almost half its weight in the first hour, so it is critical that you keep turning the grass every ten minutes, so that the water can evenly be released. It takes almost five pounds of fresh sweetgrass, to make a dry pound, and is about 78.8% water, by weight.

STORAGE of dried sweetgrass

For long-term storage, you might check the moisture level of your dried sweetgrass with a Humidity strip.We suggest mixing in at least one ULINE humidity strip (10-60% indicator, item No. S-8028, 800-295-5510, two can minimum order, or you can order them from us individually for $5 each.).

Once you get your sweetgrass dried down to 40% or less, I suggest that you store it in sealed plastic bags, to retain their scent longer.

Using the Freeze-dry & Weighing method, plus using the Uline humidity strip, and drying the grass to a particular humidity, is our own invention--- we do not want to see this data posted on any other web sites, or incorporated into any other sweetgrass information, anywhere.

Braids or dried loose sweetgrass store well in the thick white trash compactor bags with large rubber bands or twist-ties around the end. Wrap the braids or the loose sweetgrass in single sheets of newspaper, making bundles about 3-4 inches in diameter, before you store them in the plastic bags. Or you can use the clear plastic Hefty brand "One Zip" Jumbo 2.5 gallon bags or the new Jumbo storage bags, to store either the cut dried grass, or braids for future use.

Check the newspapers 24 hours after you store the sweetgrass, and make sure that they are not moist, indicating that the grass needs more drying.

Wild crafted braids are usually stored in the open air, and lose their scent within a few months that way.

We are going to try some drying and storage experiments this year (summer, 2009) and will periodically report our results on this site.

So far, storing the dried sweetgrass in sealed plastic, appears to keep the scent in the grass for about three to four times longer, than if they are left exposed constantly to the open air. Refrigeration or freezing when stored in the plastic bags, may also help keep the scent in the dried sweetgrass longer.

MAKING BRAIDS

The typical Canadian wildcrafted sweetgrass braid, consists of between 50 and 65 sweetgrass leaves. A random sample of ten Canadian braids in April 2009, half were 2 feet long, and the other half were 1.5 feet long, and the widths ranged from 1/2" to 5/8" and were 5/16" thick, and weighed an average of 0.45 oz. each. The 0.4 oz. quantity of material is the maximum amoiunt that is the easiest to braid.

Perhaps as many as 100,000 wildcrafted braids are harvested in Canada each year, which is a major source of braids in North America. The braids range from 1.5 to 3 feet long, with an average of 1.5 to 2 feet.

Braids over two feet are rare, and the 36-40 inch long braids, make up only about 1/10th of one percent of all the braids produced in a year, and are offered for $5-20 each. Shorter braids wholesale in 2009 for $2.50 each.

Canadian wildcrafted braid, showing the initial tie and start of braided end.
These leaves were harvested by pulling out by the roots, and you can see the dried roots at the end, but we recommend that you cut the leaves with a sharp knife or scissors instead.

When you first harvest the grass, make sure to keep the cut ends, all facing in the same direction. Then lay out the cut grass to dry, and go though the leaves and pull out any discolored leaves. You can also sort your leaves according to length.

It will be much easier to braid leaves that are all of the same length. You can try braiding the sweetgrass fresh, but it is much easier to braid after the leaves have dried for a few hours in the sun.

Comb the dried sweetgrass leaves with a "Lift comb" (about $2, an unbreakable model made by the American Comb Corp., Paterson, NJ), to tease out the short material and get the stems ready to braid.

Start to weave your braids, by lining up the cut ends, and wrap one of the stems a couple of times around the bundle about 2-3 inches from the cut end, and tie it off with a knot. Then start your braiding.

Every four braid-weaves or so, stop and pull on the root-end to straighten and even out the braid. If one of the three braid parts runs out before the end, redivide the remaining two braid parts into three, and finish the braid. Leavs about three inches at the end, for the final knot.

Finish the braid, by looping the very tip into a single knot, to keep the braid from unraveling. Photo shows tied off, finished end of braid.

In search of the rare 40-inch long braid...
We are doing an experiment this summer of 2009, to determine what is needed to produce the rarely seen 40-inch long braids.

First step in producing the 40 inch long leaves, is to build the redwood sweetgrass planter box and put it up on blocks.

Plants growing in raised planter boxes, helps keeps the leaves off the ground. Also, thin out the leaves periodically, so that light gets to all layers.

MAKING BUNDLES out of shorter pieces - if you have some shorter pieces of dried sweetgrass, you can make them into tied bundles, like a sage bundle.

You can keep your plants growing in pots in cold climates, just dig a hole in the garden, and place your pot in the ground for the winter. The garden soil around the pot will help keep the roots from freezing. You do not need to mulch your plants in winter.

>>>>Never grow plants indoors overwinter -Roots need the normal outdoors weather to grow properly.

NINE THINGS THAT CAN HURT SWEETGRASS PLANTS:

(1.) Drifting or accidentally sprayed herbicides. Grow your own, in a protected area.

(2.) Weeds, especially European grasses and broad leaved weeds---so weed at least once a year.

(3.) Lack of water, especially in summer-- plants usually need water at least once a day.

(4.) Clay soil, especially sticky clay, which makes it difficult for the roots to penetrate.

(5.) Water-logged garden soils. Plants like sandy to sandy-loam soil and really dislike clay soil or water-logged soils. When the soil is wet, if you squeeze it in your hand into a ball, you should be able to crumble it apart easily. If it stays in a tight ball, you probably need to add coarse sand (like sand-box sand), or up to one-third perlite, to your sweetgrass garden spot.

(6.) Trying to growing plants indoors overwinter. Never grow indoors.

(7.) NOT FERTILIZING, at least once a month during the growing season. Always fertilize.

(8.) NOT HARVESTING at least once a year, or as often as necessary. Sweetgrass leaves grow so long, that when planted close together, they require at least one cutting of their leaves, so they do not lay their leaves over each other. We harvest in May, July and August.

(9.) Please, never harvest your sweetgrass by pulling out by the roots. "Don't uproot the shoots" - Always cut the leaves, rather than pull them out by the roots. It takes a tremendous amount of time and energy for the plants to recover and regrow their leaves, if they are pulled out by the roots. However, if you cut them, the leaves will start regrowing immediately, at the rate of 1/3 inch to one inch inch a day.

Since the sweetgrass plant is clonal, spreading via its root system, means that sweetgrass plants may be among the oldest living organisms on the planet, perhaps each plant 100,000+ years old, to tens of millions of years old, making the individual plant nearly immortal.

When you replant sweetgrass into wildland areas on your property, you are planting for the ages.

PLANTS do not usually produce viable seeds, but most of those seeds are not usually viable, and starting from seed can take 3-5 years to get the same sized plant that only takes 1-2 months to produce from a plug.

As a test, we recently planted 5,000 seeds, with zero seedlings emerging. It is much easier to grow sweetgrass from a plant, than starting from seed. Once your plants are established and spreading, you can spread it faster by cutting out plugs from your own patch.

HOW to VISUALLY tell SWEETGRASS from other GRASSES.

Other than the vanilla-like scent, seven visual clues your can look for are:

1.) The base of the leaves, just below soil surface is broad and white, without any hairs, shiny.

2.) The base of the leaves measured one inch from the roots on leaves 12" long or more, the bases will be more than 1/10th of an inch in diameter and less than 2/10th of an inch. The average of 20 leaves was 0.138 inch.

3.) The undersides of the leaves are very shiny, never any hairs. When the leaves grow long and flip to expose the undersides, this shiny quality is helpful in spotting wild stands--when the sun shines off them like satin ribbons, and you can probably see them for a 1/4 mile.

4.) The undersides of the leaves are flat, never v-shaped.

5.) The leaves curl very quickly, when dried in the sun. Other grass leaves usually remain flat when dried.

6.) On leaves 12" long or more, they are at least 1/4" across at their widest point. The measured range of 10 leaves was 0.25" to 0.40", with an average of 0.328"

7.) The flowers of sweetgrass are distinctive and unique.

The special sweetgrass leaf-shine, a method to identify sweetgrass. When sweetgrass is over a foot long, the shiny undersides of the leaves flip over, and sunlight reflects off them like satin ribbons, easy to spot at a distance.

The wild stands of sweetgrass are disappearing, mainly because nutrients are removed from the ground when braids are harvested, and the soil's fertility, especially the very critical phosphorus, is being depleted over time.

3.) If you have any turf grasses or other grasses growing near your sweetgrass patch, put a barrier between them. You might find that rolls of lawn edging material, can keep the turf grasses from growing in and mixing with the sweetgrass patch, and will also confine the sweetgrass.

4.) What critters might eat your sweetgrass? If you keep ducks or geese, you should fence in the sweetgrass away from them. As far as we know, deer should not eat your sweetgrass, because they do not have the proper type of teeth to do so--they mainly eat non-grass plants and shrubs. Cats will nibble a few blades, but will not damage plants. The only major problem we have found, is wild raccoons, digging up the plants to get at earthworms on the roots. If raccoons are a problem, make a frame with wire mesh or chicken wire, to cover the plants.

---The existence of the more ROBUST POLYPLOID type of sweetgrass that we offer, was first described in 1960, in the article "The Occurrence and Distribution of Hierochloe odorata in Ohio", published in the Ohio Journal of Science Vol. 60 number 6, pages 359-365, that you can download as a pdf file from this link, or get as an html file through a search from Google.

---The SCENT of sweetgrass is very complex, with 169 volatile compounds identified in, Volatile constituents of ethanol extracts of Hierochloe odorata L. var. Pubescens Kryl., by Yoshitaka Ueyama, Toshiyuki Arai and Seiji Hashimoto in Flavour and Fragrance Journal, Volume 6 Issue 1, Pages 63 - 68, Published 1991, Online: 1 Jun 2006.

---SWEETGRASS PLANTED at North American Indian villages? - You can see a map of some of the potential village sites in Colorado, using sweetgrass as the indicator at http://www.ecoseeds.com/villagesearch.html.

The website shows sweetgrass location maps that were generated by the Herbarium at Colorado State. There is an example of one site, where sweetgrass was found in June, 1898 by C. Crandall in Conejos County, where US Highway 285 crosses the Conejos River, at Lat. 37.1012, Long -106.0067, Elevation 7,799 ft.

The US highway Route 285 follows an ancient Indian trail, and the Conejos river is still considered one of the best fishing rivers in the Southwest, so the spot where sweetgrass was found in 1898--where an ancient trail crosses a river--may be a potential Indian village site where sweetgrass was originally planted.

Anyone searching these Colorado sites for sweetgrass--if you find it, if you could please take a picture of the sweetgrass growing there, I would be grateful for permission, to post a copy of your photo to this web page.

It is a staggering thought, that when the Europeans first started plowing up the Native American sweetgrass beds, the plant was so common between 1800 and 1890 in parts of North America , sweetgrass was considered a weed.

Iowa sweetgrass location from 1913, we found in tthe Weed Flora of Iowa, by Louis Hermann Pammel, Charlotte Maria King, John Nathan Martin, Jules Cool Cunningham, Ada Hayden, and Harriette Susan Kellogg. Page 27 has a map shown below, that has been greatly enlarged and digitally enhanced:

---The BOTANICAL NAME for sweetgrass has changed over time. Linnaeus gave it its first name, Holcus odoratus in 1753 in Species Plantarum 1048.

Hierochloe odorata was first combined by Palisot de Beauvois in 1812, but Weimarck in Bot. Not. 124: 136 (1971) argues for why this combination is not valid, but a lot of literature has used Hierochloe odorata (L.) Beauv. over time.

Hierochloe borealis was a new botanical name for sweetgrass in 1817, by Johann Jacob Roemer & Joseph August Schultes in Syst. Veg. 2:513. Hierochloe odorata officially began in 1820, when Georg Wahlenberg wrote about it in Flora Upsaliensis 32. Then two botanical names that have not survived, were Savastana odorata in 1894 by Frank Lamson-Scribner in Mem. Torrey Club 5:34 and Torresia odorata in 1915, by A. S. Hitchcock in Amer. Journal Bot. 2:302.. Hierochloe odorata (L.) Beauv.When searching for sweetgrass in the historic records in North America, it is important to be aware of the different botanical names being used in the 1800s.

Plus, two other botanical names for sweetgrass were suggested by Weber in 1787 as Poa nitens in Suppl. Fl. Holsat. 2, no. 6, and in 1985, Anthoxanthum nitens by Y.Schouten & Veldkamp in Blumea 30: 348.

What has remained, is Hierochloe odorata (L.) Wahl.

The OLDEST RECORD for sweetgrass in North America found so far, is from 1823, the "Narrative of an Expedition to the Source of St. Peter's River," etc. [now called the Minnesota River, a tributary of the Mississippi River] by William H. Keating et al. on page 127: "Beyond this, we found a small lake, at the upper end which we encamped; The air was perfumed by the sweet-scented grass, (Holcus odoratus), which we found here in greater abundance than elsewhere..."

---WORLD-WIDE SWEETGRASS LOCATION MAP and data, can be found at the web site -- Global Biodivserity Information Facility, at http://data.gbif.org/species/13231685

PLACES TO SEE SWEETGRASS GROWING in the wild:

Grass Prairie Preserve, Winnipeg, CANADA
Northern end, where the path starts at the corner of Bradley Street and Ravelston Ave West

--CANADA, Winnipeg, at the Grass Prairie Preserve or the Rotary Prairie (managed by the Rotary Club), surrounded by the Transcona Industrial Park, with Bradley Street as the western boundary and at the NE corner of Regent Avenue West, and the north boundary is Ravelston Ave West. 20 acres of wet, tall grass prairie, with a trail to allow people to walk through the site. Complete plant list can be downloaded at http://www.winnipeg.ca/publicworks/naturalist/ns/Natural_Areas/NA_Reports/541.html

Sweetgrass Ethnobotanical Corner

Can you help? We are looking for answers to Seven Sweetgrass questions

1.) What is the name for sweetgrass, in a North American Indian language?

2.) How is the word pronounced?

3.) Does the word translate into something, into English?

4.) Any pictures that we can have permission to post, of traditional items made out of sweetgrass, like baskets, etc.

5.) Two traditional stories in particular about sweetgrass that we are looking for: The story of the origins of sweetgrass, and any stories about digging up and taking sweetgrass live plants with you, when your family or your village moved to a new site?

6.) Any archeological confirmations, that so-called wild stands of sweetgrass in the Americas, are all plantings, only found at ancient village sites?

7.) Anyone interested in funding the genetic work on the North American wild sweetgrass populations?

We will be posting the answers to this questions on another web page, at http://www.ecoseeds.com/nativenames.html

The sweetgrass stands in the Americas, could be looked at like thousands of years old time-capsules, planted by the native peoples, and they could tell us an interesting, fantastic story. Call Craig Dremann (650) 325-7333 if you can share any information.

Ojibwe Keepsake Quill Box, contemporary, enlarged 3x. to show details.

Artist - Cheryl Besito, Turtle Clan/Ojibwa . Construction--Birch bark foundation with quills and sweetgrass trim. Dimensions are 1.5" deep and 2.5 inches across. Photo is an example from the Akta Lakota Museum gift shop, Box 89, Chamberlain, SD 57325 - (800) 798-3452 - http://www.aktalakota.org. -- you can see five other piece by the same artist, at http://shopping.aktalakota.org/product.php?productid=100275

Call (650) 325-7333 and ask for a free dried sweetgrass sample and catalog.

customers, can call or fax orders if $20 or more--- Phone (650) 325-7333, Fax (650) 325-4056.

Home page of our main catalog with 200+ seeds and books at: www.ecoseeds.com

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Updated July 1, 2009.