Grass

Grass is narrow-leaved green herbage type of plant grown as lawns or found in the wild in fields. Used as pasture for grazing animals and can also be cut and dried as hay, which is a grass, legumes, or other herbaceous plants that have been cut, dried, and stored for use as animal fodder, particularly for grazing animals such as cattle, horses, goats, and sheep. Hay is also fed to smaller animals such as rabbits and guinea pigs. Pigs may be fed hay, but they do not digest it as efficiently as fully herbivorous animals.

Poaceae (PDF) - Plants - Farming - Soil - Seeds



Lawn is a field of cultivated and mowed grass. Lawn is an area of soil-covered land planted with grasses or sometimes other durable plants such as clover, which are maintained at a short height with a lawnmower and used for aesthetic and recreational purposes.

Field is a tract of level open land that is sometimes large. A piece of land cleared of trees and usually enclosed. A piece of land prepared for playing a game. Field in agriculture is an area of land, enclosed or otherwise, used for agricultural purposes such as cultivating crops or as a paddock or other enclosure for livestock. A field may also be an area left to lie fallow or as arable land. Many farms have a field border, usually composed of a strip of shrubs and vegetation, used to provide food and cover necessary for the survival of wildlife. It has been found that these borders may lead to an increased variety of animals and plants in the area, but also in some cases a decreased yield of crops.

Low Maintenance Lawns - Slow Growing Grass

You will never mow your grass again, well at least not as much. 8 Plants for Wild Lawns That Do Not Require Mowing: Re clover, creeping charlie, sweet woodruff, Buffalo Grass, Evergreen Moss, Dutch Clover, Snow-In-Summer, Red Creeping Thyme

No-Mow Lawn Mix - No Mow Grass - Eco-Lawn

Naturally Short Grass with Low Maintenance.

Festuca is a genus of flowering plants belonging to the grass family, Poaceae (subfamily Pooideae). They are evergreen or herbaceous perennial tufted grasses with a height range of 10–200 cm (4–79 in) and a cosmopolitan distribution, occurring on every continent except Antarctica.

Ancient gene duplication gave grasses multiple ways to wait out winter. New research shows how grasses count the short days of winter to prepare for flowering. The findings provide valuable insight into how winter-adapted grasses gain the ability to flower in spring, which could be helpful for improving crops, like winter wheat, that rely on this process. To get at the use of daylength as a winter signal, Amasino's group turned to Brachypodium, a grass used in the lab that is related to crops like corn, rice and wheat. They found that, out of 51 varieties of Brachypodium, 40 could sense short days as a sign of winter, showing there was variation for this trait among the varieties. The team found that the duplicate, named FTL9, has evolved to act as a sort of inverse of its parent gene florigen. Where florigen builds up in leaves during long days to cause flowering, FTL9 accumulates during the short days of winter. While enough florigen makes flowering inevitable, FTL9 only makes flowering possible by releasing the brakes on florigen once spring arrives.

How to install an Eco friendly Lawn for a low maintenance grassy landscape (youtube)

Sustainable Lawns and Landscaping

Short Grass Seed Varieties - Buffel Grass - Buffalo Grass

Kentucky Blue Grass (Poa Pratensis)

Ruschia lineolata 'Nana' or 'Dwarf Carpet of Stars' is a high quality, drought-tolerant, low-maintenance alternative to grass.

Zoysia is a genus of creeping grasses widespread across much of Asia and Australia, as well as various islands in the Pacific.
Z Farms

Replace your old lawn with a new slow growing grass using Lawn Grass Plugs. Lawn Plugs - Grassing.

Cutting down on Lawn Mowing will also reduce Deaths and Serious Injuries: More than 17,000 Children a year are injured by Lawn Mowers - 161,00 injuries from Lawn Mowers - Risks of Lawn Mowing.

Hustler Turf

Pesticide Lawn Application: States and local jurisdictions play a major role in regulating the use of chemicals on lawns. The active ingredient most widely used on residential lawns in the United States is a chemical mixture called 2,4-dichloro­­phenoxyacetic acid, or 2,4-D, which is sold in differing formulations under a variety of trade names. Another common herbicide is glyphosate. Studies of occupational exposure to agricultural pesticides (including 2,4-D and glyphosate) have found a positive correlation with certain cancers. There is no scientific standard for how long one should stay off a lawn after it is treated. Yet a 2013 study examining the levels of lawn Pesticides in the urine of dogs found that herbicides persisted on lawn surfaces for at least 48 hours after spraying. If you’re trying to get rid of the bulk of the exposure, you want to be off of [a treated area] for at least two days, and more like three. Just because it’s dried doesn’t mean it’s not transferable. It may mist later, or there may be dew in the morning. Even dried chemicals such as lead and pesticides leave residues on hands and clothes.

The average homeowner will spend 150 hours a year maintaining their lawn, but only 35 hours on sex. PESTICIDES: 10 times more herbicides per acre are dumped on lawns than on the fields of agribusiness. MONEY: Per acre, it costs more to maintain a lawn than it does to grow corn, rice or sugarcane. Americans spending an estimated $40 billion a year on Lawn Care. More than 80,000 people to U.S are injured and an average of 70 deaths annually mowing lawns.

Americas most grown crop is something that no one is eating, no one is asking for, and no one is quite sure what to do with. It’s your Lawn. The U.S. devotes a full one-fifth of its land to agriculture (408 million acres, or 637,500 square miles) for farmers to grow on, of which corn is the largest food crop. However, there are almost 50,000 square miles of Lawn Growing in the U.S.—almost three times as much as corn. 128,000 square kilometers (or about 50,000 square miles) of growth, three times that of the U.S. land occupied by corn. This is so ignorant it's not even funny.

The Case Against Lawns - Water Use Knowledge

Drought Tolerant Landscaping - Desert Landscapes

Low Water Landscaping - Low Maintenance Landscaping

Laws banning "non-functional turf." Ornamental grass requires four times as much water.

Ornamental Grass are grasses grown as ornamental plants. Ornamental grasses are popular in many colder hardiness zones for their resilience to cold temperatures and aesthetic value throughout fall and winter seasons. Along with true grasses (Poaceae), several other families of grass-like plants are typically marketed as ornamental grasses. These include the sedges (Cyperaceae), rushes (Juncaceae), restios (Restionaceae), and cat-tails (Typhaceae). All are monocotyledons, typically with narrow leaves and parallel veins. Most are herbaceous perennials, though many are evergreen and some develop woody tissues. They bring striking linear form, texture, color, motion, and sound to the garden, throughout the year. Almost all ornamental grasses are perennials, coming up in spring, from their roots, which have stored large quantities of energy, and in fall or winter go dormant. Some, notably bamboos, are evergreen, and a few are annuals. Many are bunch grasses and tussock grasses, though others form extensive systems of many-branched rhizomes. The bunching types are often called "clump-forming" or "clumping", distinct from the rhizomatous types, called "running". Sizes vary from a few centimeters up to several meters; the larger bamboos may reach 20 m or more tall. Some ornamental grasses are species that can be grown from seed. Many others are cultivars, and must be propagated by vegetative propagation of an existing plant. Landscaping.

Ornamental Plant are plants that are grown for decorative purposes in gardens and landscape design projects, as houseplants, cut flowers and specimen display. The cultivation of ornamental plants comes under floriculture, which is a major branch of horticulture.

Native Plants - Plants

Synthetic Grass?

Todd Valley Farms

Get and Maintain a Healthy Lawn

Tools (building) - Tools (engineering)

Scientists solve the grass leaf conundrum. Grass is cut regularly by our mowers and grazed on by cows and sheep, yet continues to grow back. The secret to its remarkable regenerative powers lies in part in the shape of its leaves, but how that shape arises has been a topic of longstanding debate.

Scythe is an agricultural hand tool for mowing grass or reaping crops. It has largely been replaced by horse-drawn and then tractor machinery, but is still used in some areas of Europe and Asia.

Scythe beats a Gas Powered Weed Wacker in Grass Cutting Competition.
South West Annual Scythe Festival - June 2010 (youtube)
Sean Dembrosky presents the different types of blades, demonstrates proper scything techniques (video).

Edible Landscapes

Growing Food instead of non-edible plants. Edible Lawns - Edible Landscaping - Edible Landscapes London

From Lawns to Edible Landscapes (youtube)

Pam Warhurst Edible Landscapes (video)

Forest Gardens - Permaculture

Plant Maintenance - Seeds

Of course growing Grass for Farm Animals is a totally different type of Grassing: Forage Seed - Best Forage - Seed Land - Hancock Seed.

Forage is plant material (mainly plant leaves and stems) eaten by grazing livestock. Historically, the term forage has meant only plants eaten by the animals directly as pasture, crop residue, or immature cereal crops, but it is also used more loosely to include similar plants cut for fodder and carried to the animals, especially as hay or silage. The term forage fish refers to small schooling fish that are preyed on by larger aquatic animals. While the term forage has a broad definition, the term forage crop is used to define crops, annual or biennial, which are grown to be utilized by grazing or harvesting as a whole crop.

Cover Crops - Seeds