How much do you know about No Mow May? Here's some surprising facts about the pollinator-friendly movement
No Mow May is about more than just being fun to say or putting the lawn mower away.
The initiative in which homeowners voluntarily forgo mowing their lawn for the month of May to provide habitat and food sources for early season pollinators has become all the buzz in recent years. It started in 2019 with Plantlife, a United Kingdom wild plant conservation charity, and then was picked up in 2020 in Appleton — the first U.S. city to do so — and has spread to urban and suburban landscapes across the country.
If you’re all about helping pollinators — a group that includes not just bees, but also butterflies, wasps, moths, beetles and flies — you first must check whether your municipality is participating in No Mow May, or some variation of it, to ensure that enforcement of long-grass ordinances are being relaxed where you live.
Green Bay is participating, but residents had to register online before May 1 and must post a city-issued yard sign. In Appleton, where it's a permanent initiative each spring, registration with the city is not required.
The University of Wisconsin Extension recently hosted a one-hour webinar titled “What’s the Deal with No Mow May?” to explain what it’s all about. Here are a few interesting takeaways from that panel discussion, with the full version available on YouTube.
There's a catch to No Mow May, and it means having a lawn that isn't just turfgrass.
It’s those flowering plants — some might call them “weeds” — in your lawn that provide the real benefit to pollinators. Bees are looking for pollen and nectar, especially now when there are few other flowers in bloom.
“Any habitat that provides more flowers is going to be a benefit to pollinators. That being said, if your lawn is all grass with no flowers at all, not mowing for the month of May is not going to have any impact on pollinators,” said Hannah Gaines-Day, research scientist at UW-Madison’s department of entomology. “So, if you’re participating just to participate but you have no flowers, then the pollinators are not going to see a benefit.”
You can always work toward creating a “bee lawn,” a mixture of grasses and plants that flower at low heights to allow for mowing and for the lawn to still be used as a recreational space while also providing food for pollinators. The University of Minnesota Extension suggests these three flowering plants as the easiest to get established and for which to find seeds: Dutch white clover, self-heal and creeping thyme.
I already have an abundance of dandelions in my yard. Do those count?
They do, which is why you often see bees on the bright yellow flowers. But for some perspective, think about your own diet. If you opened your refrigerator and the only thing in it was eggs, Gaines-Day said, you wouldn’t be the healthiest if that’s all you ate.
“Just like humans, bees need a diverse diet, and so dandelions could be part of that diverse diet. They don’t want to only have dandelions because that won’t provide all of the nutrients that they need to be healthy, but it certainly provides some resources for them,” she said.
How about that horribly invasive creeping Charlie that's all over my grass? Is that a plus for pollinators?
Unfortunately, creeping Charlie doesn’t have much pollen or nectar to offer bees, and its flower shape makes it difficult for them to access it, Gaines-Day said. (UW Extension does have some online tips on how to try to control it, but it can be a bugger.)
What happens on June 1 when it's time to cut my grass? Do I just whack it all off at once?
Depending on weather and other growing conditions, some lawns could be quite tall by June. That’s going to take sharp mower blades and extra gas to get through. Instead of trying to cut it all at once, tackle it gradually and mow just one-third off at a time each week or every other week, recommends Paul Koch, the UW Extension turfgrass pathology specialist who oversees the UW-Madison Turfgrass Diagnostic Lab.
“We call that the one-third rule, never mowing off more than one-third of the height of the grass in a single mowing,” he said.
If you take off more than a third, you’re removing a lot of the green photosynthetic tissue that provides the energy for the plant to survive. Doing it once doesn’t have huge implications but doing it routinely can stress the grass to the point that it requires more water and energy to redevelop, Koch said.
Also, if you violate the one-third rule, grass has “a defense response” to produce more energy and grow back faster than before, meaning you’ll probably need to mow more often for the first couple of weeks, he said. So, the time you saved by not mowing in May could be eaten up by extra mowing in June.
As a general rule, mow your grass high all season.
The recommended height for most grass species in Wisconsin is 2? to 3? inches, Koch said. Try to stay toward the 3-to 3?-inch end of that. Remember, taller grass grows deeper roots that help it to be naturally more drought tolerant.
“Keeping your lawn at a higher height of cut will have a lot of benefits to the lawn and will in many cases allow you to use fewer inputs, and by inputs, I mean water, irrigation, fertilizer and pesticides to keep your lawn at the state that you want it in,” Koch said.
Instead of No Mow May you may hear people say Less Mow May, Slow Mow Summer or Mow High May, June and July — all variations on the theme of mowing at a higher height and less frequently.
Does longer grass mean I'll be attracting more mosquitoes?
Nobody wants to put out the welcome mat for mosquitoes. Entomologist PJ Liesch, director of the UW-Madison Insect Diagnostic Lab, said he has not seen any research to suggest that higher grass means a higher number of mosquitoes. The pesky insects develop in bodies of waters and usually rest on dense vegetation like shrubs or thickets rather than turfgrass.
What about the worry of ticks and longer grass in my yard?
Deer ticks, the insects associated with Lyme disease and most often found in wooded areas or natural areas of tall grasses, were first detected in Wisconsin in the late 1960s and are now in pretty much every county in the state, Liesch said. Because they’re still relatively new, it’s still unknown how far their expansion or range will go.
“Generally, a (home) turfgrass setting isn’t going to be a great habitat for ticks. It’s often kind of too open, too sunny, maybe not enough moisture,” he said, but for yards surrounded by woods it's something to be aware of.
There are other ways to lend pollinators a hand beyond your lawn.
The idea isn’t to quit caring about pollinators after June 1 but to support them throughout the year. There are all kinds of trees, shrubs, perennials and annual flowers you can plant in your yard to make it a place pollinators want to hang out.
The Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation has native plant lists for each region of the country that highlight species shown to provide benefits to a diversity of pollinators. For the Great Lakes region, including Wisconsin, you’ll find sunflowers, blazing star, New England aster, swamp milkweed, purple prairie clover and serviceberry listed, among many others.
“If your main goal is to help pollinators, then looking at other plants you can plant around your garden and yard, rather than in the lawn, is probably going to have a bigger bang for your buck, although No Mow May is a great way to sort of get started and a great way to bring publicity to the plight of pollinators,” Gaines-Day said.
Kendra Meinert is an entertainment and feature writer at the Green Bay Press-Gazette. Contact her at 920-431-8347 or [email protected]. Follow her on X @KendraMeinert.
This article originally appeared on Green Bay Press-Gazette: What No Mow May can teach you about how to cut your lawn all season
