As a method of preventing desert soil erosion and developing sandy agriculture, grass lattice laying technology has been widely recognised and has been successfully applied all over the world. In order to solve the problems of high labour intensity and low efficiency of manually laying desert grass square, this paper designs an efficient desert grass square laying machine based on Programmable Logic Controller (PLC) and microcontroller automatic control technology. The desert grass square lattice laying machine mainly includes six major parts: tractor, power unit, feeding assembly, grooving plough assembly, cam hammer assembly, walking assembly. In the structural design, CATIA software is used to design the mechanical structure of the laying machine, and the service life of the load-bearing body structure is calculated to be ten years. The finite element analysis software Simulation is used to carry out static analysis on the key components, and the results show that the maximum deformation and the maximum stress of the parts are all within the permissible range of the material. The monitoring system references PLC, microcontroller and other commonly used modern sensing technologies, real-time monitoring of the operating status of the laying machine and environmental parameters, effectively improving the efficiency of the laying machine to 162 acres/day. It provides more accurate and efficient solutions for desertification prevention and control, and strongly promotes the desertification management to a new stage.