R.C. Christian

Anne Miller wrote:I don't see lignin as a bad thing.

Lignin can benefit soil by acting as a carbon source for microbes thus benefiting in soil health and helping with moisture retention.

I believe in using the chop and drop techniques and so this makes it sound even better.

Did I imply it's bad? Quite the opposite.

I guess your comment makes me think of the people who till in wood chips (lignin) into their soil, thereby locking nitrogen. That is bad.

The chop and drop aspect is literal - I just leave the lignin/biomass/refuse on the soil surface to decompose and attract all those organisms and fungi. In this way it really acts like a mulch until it breaks down.

Douglas Campbell wrote:
I do not understand the y axis on your graphs, although the patterns look reasonable.
(ps I worked on related  issues years ago).

Y axis just shows relative lignin - relative to the few different plant types it displays. (Trees have more than grass, etc.)

I'm definitely on board with lignin not being the only metric, but it is the most useful metric for above-ground biomass (No Mow), and it's easy to explain how chopping and dropping it builds soil on the surface.

Timothy Norton wrote:
Grass takes a little bit of time to polymerize lignin. I think it starts building up in content over a few weeks (As the grass matures). The longer it matures, the more lignin accumulates, the more fiber content that exists.

I suppose the question I would have is what specific grasses are you hoping to use to develop biomass?

Yeah lignin definitely takes some time to form and accumulate, so it would really only work for species that would have a decent growth cycle after chopping. I think a warm season grass is an easy example. Even though they are largely dormant in the spring of a temperate climate like mine, if they are chopped in spring, and thus produce more "stems" over the season, I would think the resulting biomass/lignin would be greater than one not chopped.

For a cool season grass, they don't grow much over the summer and thus might not accumulate much lignin, even after being chopped. - But they might produce more lignin in their cool-fall-season growth cycle, which would mean it's best to harvest in late fall.

Thanks for your reply and another rabbit hole I definitely don't need right now lol

Hey fellow permies,

I've been doing research to prepare to give a couple workshops on a "lens" for No Mow + Permaculture, and I've come across some useful info and a question that the community may be able to help with.

I've developed a set of techniques specifically for the average residential grower to use their landscape's meager outputs as valuable inputs, while transitioning their lawn to a food forest. The relevant portion of this is that it involves some use of "No Mow" as the landscape progresses through succession. I encourage people to grow this grassy biomass in order to begin to build soil, fertilize soil, and use it to make fertilizer.

In the aspect that is building soil, I've gone down a lignin rabbit hole. Lignin is wood. It takes a long time to break down. It is a super-essential ingredient to build healthy humus, fungal communities, attract beneficial organisms, create a soil composition that has air/water pores, etc. There is some amount of lignin in all plants, ranging from about 7% in grasses, to 40%+ in hardwoods.

My point is to use the No Mow as a source of elements like lignin to build soil. (It may be useful to note here that 95% of the biomass of plants comes from the air. So, when the plant is chopped or otherwise added to the soil, it is a net gain for the soil.)

In pursuing this point I used the devil (AI) to create these useful graphs (attached). What I glean from them is that lignin content in grass increases with age, and thus it's probably best to chop and drop it at the end of summer - fall. This coincides with leaf fall.

The question that I have which is hard to solve is this:

Do you think if a grass is chop and dropped earlier in the season, it will have a higher lignin content than a grass that wasn't?

In research, it was said that more stems = more lignin. I wonder if chop and dropping - or otherwise pruning - an herbaceous perennial like might cause it to produce more stems and thus a higher lignin content than the same grass that wasn't pruned. I'm sure this would vary with species and/or grass classes. It's a bit synonymous with saying that the chop and dropped plant has more biomass at the end of the season than the non chopped plant. I haven't been able to find scientific studies with this nuance, But I think the answer is that most will produce more biomass after chop and drop.

Anyway, I thought this was interesting info and and question, I look forward to your perspectives -

If you're more interested in this idea, I made a video awhile back about it, called No Mow Permaculture:

I bet the faster growth can be accounted for because the other infrastructure of the plant has already matured. It's no longer tender. It's not as susceptible to weather changes. It already has a beefy stem/trunk/crown and can probably metabolize/transfer energy faster and more efficiently.

I have a 6" raised bed in my backyard, about 8x6, that needs squash in it! It's connected to another identical bed with an arbor with grapes growing on it. In that other identical bed is asparagus. Asparagus and squash will be happy together!

I've been using Burnout (by Bonide) with success. It's only 24% Citric Acid and 8% Clove Oil, besides inert ingredients. It makes the air smell nice while you're going around spraying, tehe.

Hi all, long time lurker who decided to join the conversation here...

I installed two fruit trees this spring and I want to be sure that they make it through their first winter without any tragedies. One is a Asian-American hybrid persimmon 'Nakita's Gift', and the other is a Georgia Peach. They are both about 5-6'. The persimmon decided it would fruit this year so I'm a little more anxious about it putting all it's energy into that instead of root growth. I live in south-central Virginia, and I'm wondering if I should apply some sort of fungicide, which I've read is recommended for my situation.

Any thoughts or recommendations?