So,if you sliced with a laser diagonal at the node of grass =====()==== or apical meristem of plant tissue it is much more likely to root if it lands on the soil.

____<==>__<>__

If you also coat it with a film of rooting hormone for cuttings it is is even more likely to take root.

So, if you had a lawn, and you wanted a lawnmower roomba to make it all rich and lush with new grass you would tell the lawn roomba to make diagonal splinter-cuts and spray rooting hormone on all the thatch it flings on the lawn.

So that is a new to me way to get a grass cutter to be a grass maker.

Mass automated tractors and planning are better, but I wonder if a rice paddy could go to humanless replanting if the automatic harvester left 11% of the rice, and the planting roomba did the diagonal on nodes/apical meristem (& rooting hormone) thing. Each remaining plant is comminuted and flung to make 11 new plants with a robot. All the humans have to do is eat the rice, if they feel like it.

Rooting hormone is water soluble, but it seems likely you could just make a sticky gel that persists even at water-rich rice culture.
-- beanangel, Dec 25 2020

So it's a good thing this idea isn't a mulching mower [+]
-- Voice, Dec 25 2020


The feature that makes it new is the production of what are technically called "slips" for transplanting from grass.

The slips land on the ground as part of thatch and may sprout into new blades of grass.
-- beanangel, Dec 25 2020


What [Voice] said. [+]
-- pertinax, Dec 25 2020


But if you fling enough ideas on to the half bakery, one of them gets up-voted.
-- pertinax, Dec 26 2020



random, halfbakery