There are two Picassa gallery sites that I follow quite closely. The first is Tony Cisse's site -
Vetiver Senegal Public Gallery Tony farms and develops vetiver in Senegal's driest area - Cap Verte (200 mm rainfall). His
blog is both interesting and informative. He uses VS to support
on-farm production and for
off farm applications. He has loads of experience and is happy to share his ideas.
The other gallery is
Yoann Coppin's who lives and works in high rainfall Madagascar. Yoann has been awarded contracts for railroad cut and fill stabilization, and pollution control and water clean up. He is also a great community man and has many small farmers growing vetiver as a marketable enterprise. He demonstrates that if the demand can be created the small guys are responsive and can produce high quality plant material Yoann preaches QUALITY - QUALITY - QUALITY!! You can see this in his planting of the
railway slopes in northern Madagascar.
There are two Picassa gallery sites that I follow quite closely. The first is Tony Cisse's site - Vetiver Senegal Public Gallery Tony farms and develops vetiver in Senegal's driest area - Cap Verte (200 mm rainfall). His blog is both interesting and informative. He uses VS to support on-farm production and for off farm applications. He has loads of experience and is happy to share his ideas.
The other gallery is Yoann Coppin's who lives and works in high rainfall Madagascar. Yoann has been awarded contracts for railroad cut and fill stabilization, and pollution control and water clean up. He is also a great community man and has many small farmers growing vetiver as a marketable enterprise. He demonstrates that if the demand can be created the small guys are responsive and can produce high quality plant material Yoann preaches QUALITY - QUALITY - QUALITY!! You can see this in his planting of the railway slopes in northern Madagascar.
Thanks Dick for your comments. It is true that under very dry conditions growing vetiver can be a challenge. Our nursery has a mixture of plants which are water through a drip irrigation system and those which are planted during the rainy season and left to their own devices. The latter, as would be expected take a lot longer to develop, but can generally survive despite the dry soil and attacks from termites. Whilst there is a lack of rainfall there is for several of the dry months, a heavy dew which seems to be enough to guarantee survival. Vetiver planted during the rainy season can appear to be dead, but flourish again at first rain. The depth of the water table also plays a role, where we are a neighbor dug a well and reached 50m without getting water. It recognition of this we have recently initiated an extension programme with farmers in the Thies region, who live in an area where there are pockets where the depth is only 2m. I will be publishing photos from this project on Picassa soon
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