What are the advantages grasses carry in the permaculture setting.

I've been fighting grass for a long time now, but as the project is expanding i have to say i'm losing control. In some beds where i satrted without grasses it has crept back in and is quite dominating. As there is a heatwave i get up early to make use of the cool mornings and noticed how much dew grasses collect. Sometimes i pull it and mycelium seems fed by it..

In the past i have had a fight with yarrow. I removed it and later i observed that in my tree nursery trees that were surrounded by yarrow fared better. It made me realize my mistake and have been restoring the yarrow population after reading it's a healer plant.

I wonder if something similar goes for grasses? I am well aware that the word grass is misleading as there are so many species with differing qualities, but i would like to get a bit more nuanced about it and i'm curious what people have to say about it.

I like grass though not all grasses are created equal.

What kind of grass do you battle?

Do you chop and drop before it goes to seed?

Grasses that spread underground by rhizomes are the ones that I would not like to have.

Deep rooted grasses and native grasses sometimes build up soil fertility.

I hate the perennial runner grasses that constantly invade my garden beds. I'd love for this thread to show me that I'm wrong and chart a path for living in harmony with them, but I'm starting out with a murderous bias against them. (Grain-bearing grasses, I love!)

The US corn belt was formerly tallgrass prairie. Farmers are still taking advantage of the fertility the prairie built over those many years, 150 plus years and counting on some of the earlier homesteaded farms. We are at 146 years here since my great grandfather, Christopher settled here. We have declared our farm to be a living, learning, and sharing farm. Slightly under one half of this farm is tillable acres and the balance is in long term grassland, some native and some restored. We started comprehensive soil health testing last fall on our differing land use acres. The native grassland is running between 4 and 5 % organic matter vs the 2 % or less for the tillable acres. It is thought that each percent of soil organic matter (SOM) is equal to about 20 pounds of nitrogen per acre. As we build our SOM on the tillable acres the need for purchased fertilizer will be much less, we are working at growing our own fertility. This will be accomplished with crop rotation and cover crops. A really true balanced rotation would include about 5 years in grassland to maintain long term fertility. Charles Darwin placed stones in a pasture and observed the stones sank 7" into the soil surface after 29 years, nearly 1/4" of topsoil was built each year with help off the grassland and the earthworms.

Getting back to the garden and its fertility. I have learned some in watching the garden and its organic transformation and we are applying this to our production acres. If you saw my garden right now you might say what a mess ! But when you till a bit around the potato plants the earthworms have put out the "do not disturb" sign. So we carefully garden with the grasses and the oats planted a month ago. The garden plants get daylighted and the rest is left to grow and build the soil. I keep the annual grasses from going to seed with an occasional mowing during the summer. I am a member of the Minnesota Soil Health Coalition. Here are the soil building tenants.

Reduce disturbance
Cover the soil
Increase diversity
Keep a living root
Integrate livestock when possible

Hugo Morvan wrote:
I wonder if something similar goes for grasses? ... and have to say about it.

For me it goes back to one of the core principles of permaculture.  The problem is the solution.  Your plants need the microbiota in the soil to thrive.  The biology needs the exudates from the plants to multiply.  If there is a natural oraganism like grass that thrives and works symbiotically with the biology of your soil, why fight that?  Yes, people talk about grass and weeds 'competing' for resources; but do they?  Can you manage the competiion to maintain the benefits of what nature has selected for?  

Let the grass creep into the garden.  Let it provide for the mycillium and other biology.  It it shades out the sun, trim it.  Don't pull it, poision it, or fight it.  Does it 'steal' all the water? Transporation is a process we are just learning to understand.  All plants cycle water.  The grass clearly is helping collect moisture with the dew.  Work with the grass and benefit from its symbiosis.  Let the problem be the solution when well managed.  Is it more work to trim the grass rather than pull it?  How much work is it doing for your soil unseen and unmeasured?  Biology is telling us more and more "a lot".  Isn't permaculture the shift in perspective to work with nature rather than against it?  Rather than trying to keep the meadow out of the garden, learn to garden in the meadow.  The meadow is more successful and sustainable than a garden will ever be.  

Are we stewarts of the plants or the soil?  If we feed the biology of the soil the soil will feed the plants.  And that is our goal.  Why are we fighting against the organisms nature has evolved to feed the soil?  Does the grass do anything detrimental to the plants?  If so, can we manage that?  We have writings of agriculture all the way back to the ancient greeks; and earlier civiliztations develop those techniques centuries earlier.  But what if we found we have been doing things unnecessarily for all these milinia?  

Our modern look at biologic processes of soil, plants, and microbia are telling us we need to rethink our assumptions from the core.  It is not about killing what is there, turning the soil over and removing anything that returns.  But old habits die hard.

Yes i hate those runner grasses that grow through potatoes the most. I do pull seeds and do chop and drop. Most of my path ways are old hay, so no wonder grass is hard to battle, but we don't have wood chips or straw, so i just make due and if grass pops up, i dump more old hay on top. I guess i have to grow more cover crops and grains and trees shrubs and perennial herbs to at least stop it from becoming a problem. It's only a problem really  as i can't direct sow my annuals into grass. But thank you for the insightful answers.It helps and please don't hesitate to add more info if you happen to find this thread at a later stage.

The runner grasses that spread underground are the ones I genuinely can't make peace with. Everything else I can work around but couch grass through a bed is just a nightmare. The dew collection thing is real though, noticed the same on my paths in the morning. Doesn't make me hate it less but at least it's doing something.

When I think of the benefits grasses bring to a permaculture setting, I generally hone in on their root systems. Keeping in mind how the previous comments have already mentioned the frustrations that can come from running types of grasses, the fibrous root systems of grasses can be beneficial to certain terrains.



The dense fibrous root systems of grasses do a great job holding soil in place. Depending on the variety, the roots can mine down deep into the soil to extract nutrients and bring them to the surface. Some grasses are tenacious and can take quite a bit of abuse making them a valuable forage for livestock. Native grasses can be utilized as an attractive screen as well as valuable habitat for pollinators and birds.

Grasses are very aggressive in our climate.  The veg garden gets cardboard and woodchips to suppress their growth.  Works very well with larger plants like tomatoes, peppers, okra, squash, etc that can get above the grasses and shade them out.  I graze sheep in my orchard to keep the grass down there.  The hardest places to manage are among lower perennials such as herbs.  My wife spends a lot of time pulling grass out of the beds.  Best advice there is to really focus on what you want and keep the beds as small as possible.

Very good point Timothy, the rootsystem of some grasses is amazing. I wonder as we're all struggling with runner grasses.. I'm like taking it out on the natives which are fairly well behaved. Creating in fact space for runner grasses to invade, install themselves around perennials, very difficult and time consuming to eradicate and from there they monopolize. Probably i should get to know grasses better before acting. Some grasses have deep roots and seem to return year after year and make like mounds ants love to live in creating clumps that i dig up. Maybe i should have a line of those as a defense and after that a line of comfrey and then beds.It would provide lots of mulching material i could scythe.
I thought of another good thing about grasses, their shape provides a good shape for earthworms to drag into their underground tunnels like a snack to keep things ticking over until autumn provides all the foliage.

I agree in disliking the perennial runner grasses, and yet there is a relatively good one here in my region.  It can be moeed periodically at about 5-6 inches, and makes a meadow-lawn.  I like the idea that if I mow or graze it down, the root exudates are stimulated.  

My preferences are for the very deep rooted perennial bunch grasses like big blue stem.  Intermediate wheat grass also does a good job of soil building.  Ihave an idea that if the deep fibrous rooted grasses growvthick enough, they could crowd and shade out the creeping rhizome type.  I think that would take a very long time though.