Get in Touch With Your Johnson (Grass)

If we throw mother nature out the window, she comes back in the door with a pitchfork. — Masanobu Fukuoka

Johnson grass (Sorghum halepense), also known as Arabian millet, is hated far and wide throughout the world as a "noxious weed" and "invasive" species. Where I live, in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, it is naturalized and everywhere. Google it, and you'll find mostly information for getting rid of it, or people asking how to get rid of it. But for permaculturists, it's time to take a different perspective on this hardy, perennial grass.

How the Scales Fell From My Eyes

This morning, I was out in the backyard digging up clumps of Johnson grass with my hand weeder – much more work than it should be. We haven't had rain in a while, and the soil is dry. Yet unlike other grasses and herbaceous weeds in that part of the yard, it's coming back green and strong. And in another, unkempt part of the backyard, a few clumps of Johnson grass are tall, beautiful and deep green with tall flowering heads.

And I thought to myself, "You know, nothing kills this beautiful plant. It thrives everywhere. Can I use it as a permanent ground cover? Are there other benefits? How can I live in harmony with this plant and work with it instead of against it?"

Johnson Grass Was a 19th Century Miracle Forage!

It is named after an Alabama plantation owner, Colonel William Johnson, who sowed its seeds on river-bottom farm land circa 1840. The plant was already established in several US states a decade earlier, having been introduced as a prospective forage or accidentally as a seedlot contaminant. — Wikipedia

No doubt, Col. Johnson introduced Sorghum halepense for the reasons many hate it today: It grows and spreads like crazy, even during drought, can handle just about any soil, is hard to kill, and lays deep roots that stabilize the soil. And once you plant it, you never have to mess with it again.

An 1882 article in the New Zealand Herald trumpeted:

It is a perennial hay and grazing grass. It requires sowing but once. It can be cut for hay four times a year, and produces two to four tons per acre each cutting. It has been tried on all kinds of soils and a variety of climates, and everywhere has been a perfect success. It makes more hay than alfalfa, and of greatly superior quality. It is succulent, and contains much saccharine matter, and is very valuable for dairymen and farmers generally.

So What Went Wrong?

Well, it turns out that Johnson grass has two agricultural downsides:

1. During droughts and freezes, it concentrates lethal quantities of prussic acid (hydroden cyanide) in its leaves and stalk. Cattle and horses that eat it can die.
2. Because it spreads so widely, it competes with other crops. It's hardly polite enough to stay in pastures. Johnson grass is one reason glyphosate (Roundup) was invented.

But these downsides also hint at some of its benefits to the permaculturist, in addition to those that made it the rage in the 19th century.

Sorghum Halepense for Perennial Grain, Forage and Cover

Look at Johnson grass' scientific name: Sorghum halepense. It's a wild type of sorghum, a subgroup of millet. Domesticated sorghum/millet species are one of the most important grains humans have (I read somewhere fifth). Farmers here in the USA and South Texas grow a lot of domesticated Sorghum, though mainly as cattle feed. Sometimes it's used to make sugar.

Sorghums, including Sorghum halpense, are fundamentally desert grasses. In Africa and other dry regions, domesticated varieties are commonly cultivated, and wild varieties – including Sorghum halpense – are harvested for seeds in tough times:

The grain of S. halepense and S. vulgare (=S. bicolor) is edible. It is used extensively like millet as human food in various parts of the world, especially in tropical Africa and Asia. The grains of S. halepense were reportedly eaten by Pima Indians of Arizona after the plant was introduced by the Spaniards. – Francois Couplan, Ph.D., "The Encyclopedia of Edible Plants of North America: Nature's Green Feast"

Sorghum halpense also has many traditional medical and craft uses.

But what about the prussic acid, you say? Won't that cyanide kill you? No. The prussic acid is in the leaves and stalks. If you cultivate Johnson grass and have a drought, don't let your livestock eat the plant, but the seeds are just fine, as are the roots. (I've read that pigs love the roots.) And all that cyanide kills insects that eat it, an especially useful adaptation when insects get desperately hungry during droughts.

So to boil it all down, what we have is a perennial, grain-bearing grass that's superbly drought hardy and insect resistant, produces lots of biomass, has an extensive root system to prevent soil erosion, and requires little or no work to cultivate.

A scientific paper in Bioscience, "Prospects for Developing Perennial Grain Crops," mentions Sorghum halepense as one of many wild plants researchers are trying to hybridize with domesticated species to produced hardy, perennial food crops.

Grain and oilseed crops are the foundation of the human diet, but to date there are no perennial species that produce adequate grain harvests. Yet perennial plant communities store more carbon, maintain better soil and water quality, and manage nutrients more conservatively than do annual plant communities, and they have greater biomass and resource management capacity.

Of course, we can eat Johnson grass seeds and roots now. (We can eat just about any grass seeds.) Its just that each plant doesn't produce a lot of grain.

Johnson Grass in My Garden

I figure, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em." I want to integrate Johnson grass into my yard. ... It's either that or plan on digging it up periodically for the rest of my life.

I'm still working out the details, but my top notion is to use a mix of Johnson grass and nitrogen-fixing plants (e.g., clover) in the corner of my backyard where I'm planting fruit trees. I'll keep it a few feet from the young trees with mulch and hand weeding to prevent competition.

Mowing Johnson grass doesn't work so well, so I'll just cut it back periodically. That's less work for me – quarterly reaping vs. biweekly mowing. Some of the cutting will stay where it is to improve the soil, but I'll use the bulk of it to make compost for the vegetable garden.

Note: Composting won't spread Johnson grass if you hot compost.

I also may harvest some Johnson grass seeds to eat, and I will certainly add it to my list of wild foraging foods, along with prickly pear pads and fruit, mesquite pods, ebony beans, yucca root and other regional wild staples.

#permaculture #johnsongrass #perennials #yard