My Australian Lawn

by Col Jackson

I read with interest John's comments about his lawn in the last newsletter. I, too, have a long held desire to establish a nice grassy area around the house and originally did make an attempt in the misguided belief that lawn seed plus fertilizer plus water equals a lush lawn. Alas, not so. The real equation turned out to be more like lawn seed plus fertilizer plus water is equal to wasted money multiplied by a mat of undesirable weeds plus bare patches. After some initial war between the weeds and I, a lopsided truce was established where I agreed not to bother them if they stayed out of the garden beds and they agreed to try to take over everything.

Time rolled on and other activities took my interest. Eventually I found it desirable to re–shape the ground at the end of the house to try and drain water away from the house rather than towards it. This work was carried out in winter and was quite successful in achieving my drainage goals. As it was also successful in creating a 40 square metre muck hole I decided that I needed to cover the mud with my own 'instant turf' by carefully collecting shovel–sized patches of native grass from further up the hill. I collected the patches of grass sporadically from under the trees so the damage was not too noticeable and it did cover the mud nicely when all laid down like a kind of natural jigsaw puzzle.

Time passed by and most of the grassy area survived, albeit with a healthy sprinkling of weeds, until I was showing Bev Hanson around the garden. Bev commented that I had a nice patch of Weeping Grass (Microleana stipoides) established as lawn. I confessed to her that I previously had no idea what it was and told her the history of it. Co–incidentally, as we were walking to the shed she also noted that I had some Dicondra repens (Kidney Weed) growing under a large gum. Not wishing to further show my ignorance I simply said "Hmmm" and left it at that.

It got me thinking though, as I had read somewhere that both Weeping Grass and Kidney Weed could also be used as a native lawn substitutes. With a vague goal of establishing more grassy areas around the house I took a greater interest in the local grasses and found that Weeping Grass had readily established itself in most of the areas that I slash annually for fire protection. It seems that my regime of slashing in the late spring and early summer was stopping many of the introduced grasses from going to seed but allowed the Weeping Grass to form its seed heads through the summer and autumn. With this discovery I started collecting seed from the grasses which subsequently got stored and forgotten on the window sill in the family room. Eventually they were discovered again (when Mary demanded I clean up the mess) and I found that they grew quite readily when sown in a propagating tray. These I potted up to forestry tubes until they threatened to take over my propagating tables.

As I was potting up the grasses, I recalled the Kidney Weed patch under the gum. Yes, it was still there so I carefully potted up about 20 plants into small tubes. I found with a little Charlie Carp and some regular watering these flourished and quickly filled their containers. From there on it was a simple matter to keep dividing and re–potting these until I had numbers to rival the Weeping Grass and I was really putting my propagating area under pressure.

This brings us to the present. Although the Weeping Grass 'lawn' looked pretty dry and dead in the worst part of the summer it has survived very successfully by bouncing back after the first good rains and immediately setting new seed. I am now starting to plant out my tubes by filling in some of the bare patches in my grassy area and digging and raking some new areas. I am planting a mixture of Weeping Grass and Kidney Weed throughout although I suspect the Kidney Weed may struggle in full sun. Propagating grasses by growing them in tubes has proved to be fairly time consuming and I think I will experiment with a small patch direct seeded to see if this is successful.

What have I learned that I could pass on to others? Perhaps starting small is the best advice. Almost inevitably there will be weeds and these are best tackled by hand weeding with a weeding fork, as tedious as that may sound. There is a lot to be said for sorting out your techniques on a small scale before making mistakes on a large one. Look local; you may be surprised at the amount of endemic plants available that you can use to propagate from. Do not discount manual propagation, although it is time consuming it is also very rewarding to watch your labours coming to fruition and it will give you well established plants to put into the ground. Don't necessarily expect verdant bowling green style lawns from some European picture postcard. This is an Australian alternative and should be accepted as such. For myself, I draw much more pleasure from observing a low sea of waving Weeping Grass seed heads dotted with crimson splashes as a flock of Firetail finches work their way through in their steady mission of seed collection. And finally, think laterally. I have focussed on only two species of lawn alternative. With a little thought and experimentation, there are almost certainly numerous plants out there that will flourish in your local environment.

Forgotten Treasures

by Graeme O'Neill

Ian Chivers (Native Seeds Pty Ltd) is raising the profile of Australia's highly adapted and nutritious native grasses, including wild rice.

As pastures and lawns wither in the grip of the extended drought, native grasses, maligned by pastoralists since colonial times, are showing their remarkable pedigree and potential for Australian conditions. Researcher and businessman Ian Chivers is championing their strong credentials for both suburban and rural applications.

As an agronomy student at the University of Melbourne in the 1970s, Ian Chivers was taken aback by a lecturer's patent contempt for native grasses. 'He'd thump the desk and say the sooner we got rid of our useless native grasses, and replaced them with exotic grasses, the better.'

But Chivers says graziers and agronomists in the '70s, and earlier decades, typically only saw native pastures that were already severely overgrazed. Cattle and sheep had already devoured the highly palatable native species, leaving the dross. 'Had they seen ungrazed native pastures, they might have thought differently,' he asserts.

He feels that few critics back then had stopped to consider the obvious—that after tens of millions of years of adaptation to aridity, highly unpredictable rainfall and nutrient–depleted soils, Australia's native grasses might actually be superior to imported species, particularly in periods of climatic adversity.

The pastoral industry's early preference for exotic forage grasses has left large swathes of Australia's agricultural lands covered in drought–vulnerable grass species. With the trend towards drier conditions across temperate Australia, the sector faces increasing risk.

Furthermore, some imported perennials, such as paspalum, prairie grass and Texas needle grass, have become invasive weeds, along with chance invaders like serrated tussock and feathergrass that have flourished in the absence of the herbivores, pests and pathogens with which they evolved. So too has the popular lawn grass Kikuyu.

A taste for native grasses

In 1988, Chivers made a life–changing discovery in a drought–affected paddock in the outer northern Melbourne suburb of Craigieburn.

At the time, south–east Australia was in the grip of another severe El Nino event that had reduced the introduced annual ryegrass pasture in the Craigieburn paddock to brown, desiccated tufts. Among them was a patch of verdant green—a deep–rooted native grass, later identified as Microlaena stipoides, flourishing in a rocky outcrop.

So began Chivers' interest in the resilience and qualities of native grasses, one that led him to set up Native Seeds Pty Ltd, a member of the Grain Foods Cooperative Research Centre (GFCRC).

At GFCRC's stand at ABIC (Agricultural Biotechnology International Conference) in 2006, Chivers tempted delegates with small delicious muffins baked from the flour of the same Australian native cereal he had come across 18 years before.

Microlaena – commonly known as weeping grass, weeping rice grass or meadow rice grass—is indeed a relative of rice, the world's no. 1 human food crop. However, the flour made from the native grass seed has much higher protein levels than any of the 'Big Three' cereals. When Chivers had Microlaena's protein content analysed, it was 22 per cent, compared with only 9 per cent for rice, 12–14 per cent for the best hard wheats, and up to 18 per cent for high–protein hybrid maize varieties.

Selecting a form of Microlaena suitable for grain production, Chivers used criteria such as seed–head architecture, improved seed retention—an essential characteristic for any harvested grain—and robust, upright stems.

The seed, which resembles miniature long–grain rice, is relatively large for an Australian grass, but about half the size of domesticated rice or wheat—both products of millennia of human selection for size and yield. As Chivers says, weeping grass has not undergone selector or breeding for larger seed size.

'It's not a finished product. We've still got a long way to go—it's probably about 60 per cent of the way to domestication. We need a strong, systematic breeding program. We've got it growing at eight locations across the NSW and Victorian cereal belt. We're in the early stages of pushing it out into the market—the ultimate destination is the supermarket. Some chefs are very keen to try it out. They've already made a native rice pudding, and someone else used it as a flan base.

Out to pasture

Professor Wal Whalley, University of New England (right), with Ian Cole, NSW Department of Environment and Conservation, assess the native grass Microlaena stipoides, which contrasts to the paddocks behind under conventional imported pasture at a site near Wangaratta, Victoria (Native Seeds Pty Ltd)

Weeping grass also shows outstanding potential as a pasture grass. Chivers says the deep–rooted perennial is sweet and highly palatable to livestock. Its green matter is even higher in protein than the grain: commonly around 25 per cent, but as high as 35 per cent, depending on the season.

Chivers has collected a range of M. stipoides ecotypes from a variety of loam and clay soils, and acid to mildly alkaline soils (pH 3.8 to 8.0).

The tall, vigorous Ovens cultivar, a selection from the wheat and sheep country on the Victorian–NSW border, actually resembles rice in its habit, and with its very high protein content, makes an ideal fodder grass.

So far Chivers has selected six ecotypes for commercialisation, including tall, leafy varieties for fodder; stout, hardy varieties for revegetation; and a low, spreading selection for lawns.

'Let's say Joe Bloggs has a 1000–hectare property at Kilmore, in Victoria. He puts in 200 hectares of our grass, and lets his cattle to graze it intermittently for eight months of a year. Then he closes the paddock, lets it run to seed, harvests the grain and sells it to us for use as a boutique cereal with high–protein flour. After harvest, he opens the paddock up to for grazing again, so he's getting maximum value. The paddock doesn't need liming to reduce acidity, it doesn't need fertiliser, and because it's deep rooted, it's not going to die if it's affected by drought in summer.'

A low, spreading selection of weeping grass makes an attractive, shade– and drought-tolerant lawn that can be grown as a single-species sward, or blended with even more drought-tolerant native species like redgrass (Bothriochloa macra) and wallaby grass (Austrodanthonia). It stays green through summer and winter on only half-a-dozen watering's per year. It's not invasive like buffalo, couch or Kikuyu, and less demanding of fertilisers. Different forms grow in the 450mm-plus coastal rainfall zone from Cape York Peninsula to Tasmania and south-west Western Australia.

Weeping grass thrives in subcoastal and montane environments up to the snowline—and on the inland slopes of the Great Divide, down to the edge of the semi-arid zone.

The promise of channel millet

Channel millet in trial plots showing the same vigour as in normal field conditions. (Native Seeds Pty Ltd)

Ian Chivers now sells seed for more than 20 native grass species, which are increasingly popular for stabilising land against erosion; revegetating mine tailings dumps; landscaping parks, gardens, roadside verges and median strips along city freeways; as a cover crop to suppress weeds in vineyards and orchards.

Some native species that evolved as opportunists in Australia's conditions are even more productive than Wheat. For example, channel millet, Echinochloa turneriana—which is relatively large seeded—grows in the wake of cyclone-related floods in the Channel Country of south-west Queensland.

'It has evolved to grow and seed very rapidly, before the land dries out,' says Chivers. 'It's over my height only six weeks after germinating and produces huge seed heads. Under cultivation, it looks to be yielding around 5 to 6 tonnes a hectare.'

With irrigation in warmer areas of Australia where cotton is currently grown, channel millet's rapid growth cycle could allow two or three crops per year, resulting in yields of more than 20 tonnes per hectare (t/ha).

The record yield for wheat is 16t/ha for an irrigated crop grown under a high-nitrogen regime on New Zealand's well-watered Canterbury Plain in 2004. Chivers says that while channel millet makes a useful fodder crop, it has multi-purpose potential. The seed could be harvested to produce biodiesel, and the cellulose from the leaves and stems could be fermented to make ethanol. Over time, he believes, it could also be developed as an edible crop for humans.

Keeping our lawns

The back lawn of imported tall fescue (Festuca arundinacea) grass on cracking clay at a homes in Hoppers Crossing, Victoria, at the end of summer. (Native Seeds Pty Ltd)

The front gaarden of the same home sown with native redgrass (Bothriochloa macra). (Native Seeds Pty Ltd)

The Grain Foods CRC is collecting and researching native grasses as potential alternative grain crops, or as 'boutique' crops for the Western food market, which is increasingly interested in novelty. Chivers' company is the vehicle used by the CRC for commercialising native grass seeds.

Native Seeds Pty Ltd has recently been targeting the domestic market for drought-tolerant lawn grasses. Chivers says owners of conventional lawns are 'under the pump' in the current drought, and demand for more drought-tolerant native lawn grass seed has been strong.

'I get really annoyed by people suggesting we should go without lawns, because I see these native grasses as very efficient water users,' says Chivers. 'They can stay green on just the available rainfall, and don't need the usual suburban watering regime. Lawn has values other than aesthetic, there have been studies that show a good lawn around the house lowers the temperature in summer, and reduces noise and dust. Some people remove their lawns and pave over the area with paving stones, which get red hot in summer, and add to the air conditioning load in the house. If you use the right type of grass, you can still have a lawn with all these desirable characteristics'.

Weeping grass and redgrass, for example, are both deep-rooted native perennial lawn grasses. Chivers says experimental redgrass lawns are thriving in the heavy red basaltic soils of Melbourne's outer western suburbs, and inland areas such as Wagga Wagga in south-eastern NSW. The highly drought-tolerant species can apparently be grown as a low-maintenance, water-frugal lawn almost anywhere across southern Australia.

According to Chivers, there are at least another 20 species with potential as lawn or fodder species. Some are adapted to moderate-to-highly acidic soils with a pH of 5.5-4.3. The 2001 National Land and Water Resources audit estimated that 50 million hectares of surface soils and 23 million hectares of sub-surface soils across Australia are affected by acidity.

'We're talking about large areas of land north and west of the Great Divide, whole slabs of the Murray-Darling region, South Australia's mid-north and Eyre Peninsula, and huge swathes of cental Queensland and the Northern Territory,' Chivers points out. 'Most can be described as highly acidic, very shallow soils that are subject to intermittent drought and very high temperatures.'

Native Seeds Pty Ltd is now assessing other native grass species that have potential use as grains or as sources of flour. Some, like wild sorghum (Sorghum spp.) and rice relatives (Oryza spp.), are potential sources of valuable genes that could be transferred to their domesticated relatives via advanced 'wide cross' hybridisation techniques.

With Australia again in the depths of what is being described by some as the worst El Nino drought since European settlement, Chivers is convinced that hardy, once-maligned but drought-tolerant native grasses have much to offer graziers, and suburban gardeners.

More information: Native Seeds Pty Ltd

Written by Graeme O'Neill, taken by Mike Beamish with the permission of James Porteous, Editor of ECOS magazine.

Second instalment of this article will be in July's newsletter, though the full article has been included on our web site.

The national plant phenomics facility could help fast-track plant genetics work on promising Australian grain species such as this Astreble lappacea at Walgett, NSW. (Native Seeds Pty Ltd)

Editors's Say

Rainfall?