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Anon starts to believe
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this post was submitted on 01 Aug 2025
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There was this study, I think it was German, of fields for hay (herbivores eat it). They had monocultures and then fields with mixes. While some monocultures did very well some years the mixes did best on average - better defined as producing more biomass. The same probably goes for lawns.
This has been known for quite a while now. I've seen US Ag short films from the 1930s on the benefits of pasture blends and the increased tonnage of feed it produces and how best to manage it to maximize the feed values for greater profits.
Growing up on a small dairy farm we used a mix of alfalfa, red clover, and timothy or maybe fescue. It's been few decades. It was pretty much up to providing decent forage even in dry years or on light ground.
this makes sense from a mathematical perspective, because you're diversifying risks so in a year where one type of plant doesn't grow well, another can take over. so it's more likely that there's a plant in there that can grow well that year.
Yeah, it didn't blow my mind but I'm glad that people do the science so we can actually quantify these things. They had big improvements up to 4 species and then the gains were less as they increased it.
Of course this doesn't mean you can drop monoculture in agriculture. You still need your grains to mature at the same time so you can harvest mechanically. Buyers don't want mixes of stuff either. All that jazz. But lawns would probably be much better off with mixed plants.
interesting. is that why we plant 4 different types of plant on a field in a row? i.e. year-on-year cycle
Three Sisters in native american agriculture. (three is approximately four)