GRASS IS OUR FRIEND!
GRASS IS OUR FRIEND!
Grasses. Are they just boring ground covers which require a lot of time, energy, and money to maintain? They don't have to be! That might be the perception for many people, maybe a nuisance or hassle, but the truth is, Grasses are our friends!
They can be very beautiful. They are used as nice ornamental accents in yards, as well as focal points in and of themselves. Many professional landscapers are using grasses in commercial and residential designs which, at least here in the Midwest, are becoming quite the trend. You have probably even seen some of them without realizing it. In this way, grasses are a vital element which falls into the first principle of Permaculture; Observe and interact. You can find the other principles of Permaculture here, which were made popular by one of the co-founders of Permaculture, David Holmgren, along with more information about what Permaculture is, if you are unfamiliar and interested in learning more.
See! Aren't they beautiful?
There are practical reasons to have an appreciation for grasses, as well. Farmers plant fields of various grasses to use for grazing animals, such as cattle and horses, and to brush hog into hay bales for a variety of uses, mostly also for food. Additionally, they plant fields for restoration and conservation of lands that have been overgrazed, suffered water erosion, have been overtaken by invasive species, and damaged through fires, and to replenish the soil of vital nutrients.
One important reason grasses are our friends is because they sequester carbon by helping to reduce carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which doesn't just help reduce air pollution, but microorganisms living in the soil. Carbon sequestration, as defined in the Encyclopedia Britannica says:
Carbon sequestration, the long-term storage of carbon in plants, soils, geologic formations, and the ocean. Carbon sequestration occurs both naturally and as a result of anthropogenic activities and typically refers to the storage of carbon that has the immediate potential to become carbon dioxide gas.
We need healthy ecosystems in order to live!! Grasses play an important role in a healthy environment for us as well as the rest of the planet (although on a personal note, I am not a fan of what are considered lawns). Therefore, grasses should be respected. They are Beneficial and Beautiful.
I hope I have enlightened you on why GRASSES ARE OUR FRIEND!. (If you are interested in learning more about carbon sequestration, which is quite an in depth subject, you can get a head start on this topic now with this research paper published in the Wiley-Blackwell Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture's article The role of soil microbes in the global carbon cycle: tracking the below-ground microbial processing of plant-derived carbon for manipulating carbon dynamics in agricultural systems which can be found on Pubmed here:, but be forewarned, it's a heavy read. wink-wink
Well, that's all for now. Now that you are EXTREMELY EXCITED TO LEARN MORE ABOUT GRASSES the next few posts will delve into a couple of specific grasses growing here in/next to my homestead, which I mention in my recent short story post WALK ALONG WITH ME #1. Stay tuned! More is on the way...
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Nice post. I live in the United Arab Emirates, all the grass is man made. When I go back to the UK, it feels like I'm living in a big forest.
is that because its so dry there? forgive me i don't know much about that region of the world.
uk gets a lot of rain so it doesnt surprise me. i imagine where its not a big city its gorgeous. i used to want to migrate to ireland. now id rather go to new zealand. both are beautiful, though.
Yes, it very rarely rains here. Maybe in the winter months for the odd day. So they use sprinklers everywhere to produce grass.
That's a shame. There are surely some native plants which thrive in those conditions.
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I had to read when I saw that title! I'm working on a piece on grass myself on how it fits into our little ecosystem. I think that phrase, "grow food not lawns" has turned grass into the enemy.
I can understand why you have that opinion because on a sustainable level it's been promoted heavily. I support that idea of "grow food, not lawns" because of a lot of reasons. That said, grass serves a very important function, it's not the enemy. The enemy is the mindset that we can and should exploit nature regardless of impact that has on the environment and us. Invasive grass is not cool either!!! We've got crabgrass that's impossible to coexist with.
Personally I prefer using the phrase "eat the weeds" instead.
I live where if we wanted to (or just can't get to it in time) we could let everything get as big as it wants but wading through a sea of meadow isn't ideal lol. As soon as possible I want this place planted where will require very minimal work.
My problem with lawns is they work against nature which means they are costly to keep in order, often use toxic chemicals frequently and a ton of it, they require a lot of water, they don't having stacking purposes, they often aren't even used, and there are much better options. My goal here is no mow asap. I can't maintain a lawn even if I liked them.
Will be looking forward to reading your post. { :
I like "eat the weeds!" I think we can have a tendency to label things, then that label can end up with a word being used as a bad description when it was never mean't that way, or even being changed to mean something else.
So, yes, most lawns are now chemical ridden stretches of grass, but they can be anything. I like to take the meadow mentality towards lawns these days.
Some grasses are incredibly hard to get rid of. The tiniest bit of root will bring them back. Is crab grass a creeping type? They say if you continually remove a plant's leaves then you can kill anything. It could be an interesting experiment for invasives.
The only way I've ever found to suppress weeds is to completely smoother of light. Even some like crabgrass can stretch out to expand past the weed barrier, but you can effectively kill. Ever leave a kiddy pool on the grass over fall and winter? Then when you move it the ground is dirt? Viola! The most effective weed killer I know.
I don't want to pretend that I never use chemicals. There are specific instances I do and will but I'm not happy about it and avoid doing so at all cost.
Crabgrass spreads similarly to the way strawberries do. Has deep roots that will regrow if not entirely removed. However, the smother method does work!
We have a grass that creeps through anywhere. Smothering with newspaper worked really well until the birds started scratching the paper up! Like you say though, you have to cover a larger area to stop those shoots creeping out.
Who'd have thought we'd be having a conversation on grass! Lol
I know, right!! and you absolutely have to plant something that will prevent the grass from growing immediately or it will just come back and flip you the bird. what we used to kill the grass was an old swimming pool, a broke down car, and a pile of cardboard. wasn't intentional, but did the trick. hah.
Darn, I don't have any broken down cars or old pools! Lol!
haha.
I wish I could see my grass again, it has been so long, I wont see it until mid April beginning of May, I really enjoyed looking at your grass though. LOL
April isn't as far away as it seems. { : you will enjoy it so well once it wakes back up. I never really paid much attention to grass or plants until after i had lived in the Los Angeles area, which is like solid highly dense city and urban sprawl spanning a hundred or more miles. Not that there is no nature or nicely landscaped places, but it was so brown and dry. so happy to be back.
We live on other grasses...rice, wheat, barley etc, theyre all important grasses to us
we've got those grasses around here, too. id like to grow some rye. i bout some rice seeds. this isn't exactly the usual environment for it, but i think i might give it a try anyway since it floods here easy. we had some wheat straw bales delivered last year which had seeds so we had a few little baby wheat plants starting to grow
Thats great. Grasses are generally easy to grow, so good luck getting fiid crops going
I would rather cut grass than blow snow
hahaha
well i'd rather do neither. and i don't.
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Thank you @phedizzle. You presented some facts that were really fuzzy to me and made it very clear.
To be honest , I am learning more about grasses as I'm mostly just familiar with the term as it applies to "lawns". Yuck , I know you said you weren't a big fan but I'm learning , I'm learning :) Thanks again
for your insightful post.
thanks for the comment @robertandrew! I appreciate it. I do not hate lawns. I just think they are wasted effort, expensive, not very nutritious. just, not very practical.