Tried out something a little different for this video. I get asked a ton about no mow or low mow lawns and if the things that come up are actually beneficial to pollinators. I did a tier list for this video where I rank the plants on a scorecard and then place them into a ranking system.

Let me know how you liked it!

Thanks for watching, Anthiony

Thanks everyone who gave it a watch!

My field looks like I'm growing hay the grass is like 2 1/2 3" high. Tractor down.

Thank you, very informative and several plants I have are not rated very well so mowing in May is not a big of an issue for me as some.

Bryce

Thank you, Anthony.

Thanks Anthony, Very interesting as always

I'm a little disappointed in the info on ground ivy, I'm overrun with it and haven't tried to discourage it as it makes a nice groundcover under miss Daisy's roses and the bees seem to like it, and most important, the deer won't touch it. But now that I know it's allelopathic I'm going to have to reconsider... . Not sure how that's gonna work, it's everywhere, lol

Thanks for giving me a good excuse to neglect my lawn maintanance.
No chemicals, and infrequent mowing.

I’ve notice with the early and frequent rainfall the grass seemed to outgrow the weeds this year the less maintained the less weeds this year in places.

Only dandelions,clover as weeds here so I will keep mowing.Good information.

The three primaries ones here in early thru late spring lawns would be henbit/dead nettle, dandelions and white dutch in that order.

Dead nettle signals the transition between the super early season of maple and willow blooms as winter starts to lose its grip on the land in mid March. The nettles arrive in April and will overlap into first days of May with the dandelions. The dandelions dont really amount to anything until the last days of April and are done on average by May 10-12th and the nettle is long played out on average. Nettle is a pretty significant bee food here in the transition as its about all there is whether its great or not. But dandelions are what determines when winter ends and spring arrives in our bee world. The old saying for these parts is "there's three days between starvation and swarming". And those three days are keyed off the dandelions. However, there is a ton of other pollen that comes in during May which actually makes it a good time to trap pollen here but dandelion nectar reigns as supreme. This region has more issues with too much pollen rather than not enough. We'd likely survive without dandelions but it'd be a completely different world for sure relative to carb intakes. In these parts you don't see nettle in yards to speak of. But the big ag fields turn purple with it. Dandelions are common in yards but from my perspective that environment isnt particularly important as it amounts to such a small footprint relative to the vast acres (miles) of farm ground that turn yellow with dandelions. For some folks with colonies by suburban/urban areas no mow May might be beneficial but realistically we are talking about a two week period max of dandelions being of importance.

The clover is just getting going good here. As nettle transitions us to early spring, the dutch clover plays a similar role and takes us to summer. Historically we go to dearth at the end of May/early June and stay in some version of it until the very end of June. This year is likely one of the worst dearths I've seen in my lifetime for this time of year. I havent looked back in the family log books to the end of the 1800's but my guess is there will be few other years that compare. Dutch clover is one of the only things for a large chunk of the state that keeps bees plugging along until the summer flow hits in July. If I was to pick a curtailed mowing month here it would be June. In fact, I dont slow the mower down for dandelions but I havent mowed for last two weeks to salvage the clover.