Edible Landscape - Serai (Lemon Grass)

This aromatic plant (English Name : Lemon Grass; Botanical Name : Cymbopogen Citratus) is easily grown and serves as a nice border plant and produces a pleasant lemony fragrance.  As such, every time I prepare the lemon grass for market, I will burn the discarded excess leaves and roots, and enjoy the aroma as well as keeping the bugs like mosquitoes, away.  With its thin, long leaves, and sharp edges, use care in handling them.  
It is often used as a cooking condiment in savoury dishes.  The leaves can also be dried to create tea which is prepared in similar manner to other herbal teas.  Sweeteners such as honey can also be added to the tea concoction and can be served hot, warm or cold.  It is tasty cold on hot, sunny days.
It is purported to have cleansing effect on the body, helping to remove toxins from our system and also has anti-cancer properties by inducing apoptosis (programmed cell death) of cancer cells by citrol, a molecule found in the stalks and leaves.  So, you can enjoy this drink but at the same time have some great health benefits.
Sliced, young Serai stalks makes a great addition to nasi kerabu and shrimp or calamari salad (kerabu).  This kerabu is very easy to make - lightly cooked shrimp, sliced young serai stalks, juice from limau nipis (key lime) or lemon, olive oil, salt and pepper - all tossed together.  For those of you who live a little "heat", add your choice of fresh chilies to this.
As the plant matures, new stalks grow from the initial stalk planted to create a bush of stalks of serai.  It is easily propagated from the whole stalk. As the stalk matures, the old leaves will dry out and should be removed to maintain a nice green "bush".  I find that this plant should be re-planted every six months in order to have nice, fat stalks otherwise it will tend to "rot of old age".
The serai is an easy plant to grow in direct sunlight and easy to propagate via its stalks.  It requires regular watering to ensure good quality serai stalks.  As the leave matures, it will turn brown and dry out.  To keep the plant healthy and good-looking, regular removal of the dead leaves should be done.