Peter, the man in charge of the homestead let me buy one Vetifer plant (each plant has about 100 or more slips) which we put into an old cement bag and headed back home. I dropped off one chunk of the plant with Mzee Ramahdan and friends (who were very excited to have some to plant) and then brought the rest home to plant the next day.
Vetiver Grass has roots which reach 10 m in depth and which have a stronger sheer strength than steel which makes it the number one candidate worldwide for erosion control. It has value as fodder, medicine, perfume ingredient, mulch, thatch, and basket weaving as well. It doesn't set seed outside of its home country and it does not spread underground like some grasses. You can take part of the clump without destroying the rest of it. If you take the whole clump away, it doesn't return from the roots so you can modify a landscape without having a long term regeneration problem. In one year, each of the slips should be a clump of 100 slips. So, by year three, there should be plenty of project material.
