Sawflies: A Truly Weird Garden Pest | You Bet Your Garden
May 22, 2026 · 56 min · 15 segments
Mike McGrath examines a garden pest that may have many people confused. Plus, a heaping helping of your fabulous phone calls!
May 22, 2026 · 56 min · 15 segments
Mike McGrath examines a garden pest that may have many people confused. Plus, a heaping helping of your fabulous phone calls!
From the well-manicured studios of WDDIY FM in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for another turf war hour of chemical-free horticultural hijinks, you bet your garden.
I'm your host Mike McGrath, and in this week's In The News, we present a story by Becky Little, a freelance writer based in Washington, DC.
[news jingle] And I quote, "When spring rolls around in the Northern Hemisphere, so do conversations about No Mow May.
The idea is for homeowners to forgo mowing, allowing otherwise hidden flowers to bloom in your lawn, increasing your yard's biodiversity and providing food for pollinators like native bees.
However, scientists have increasingly questioned whether this trend, which began in the UK, is comparable with US lawns.
The group originally coined the slogan to encourage local UK councils to manage green spaces more like traditional hay meadows to increase biodiversity, according to Sarah Shuttleworth, a botanical advisor for Plant Life.
In the UK, she says, people's lawns are often kind of relic grasslands, and letting them grow can reveal native flowers they didn't know they had in their lawn.
Those flowers provide nectar and pollen for native bees and other local pollinators that evolved alongside these plants.
Soon, more than 30 US cities had adopted No Mow May initiatives, and many individual households have become interested in practicing it.
But at the same time, scientists began to question whether this was the right strategy for US lawns.
The United States has more varied climates compared to the UK, meaning that flowers bloom at very different times across the country.
In addition, the country's history of colonization means that a lot of the plants in US lawns, including the grasses themselves, are non-native species.
These non-native plants don't necessarily provide good support for native pollinators.
In 2024, Appleton announced that it was dropping No Mow May in favor of Slow Mow Summer.
The city now encourages residents to raise their lawnmowers' blades to four inches and wait to mow until the grass reaches six inches.
In 2018, the journal Biological Conservation published a study in which researchers mowed Massachusetts lawns at different intervals between May and September.
They were surprised to find that lawns mowed every two weeks yielded more pollinators than lawns mowed every week or every three weeks.
The theory is that this is because two weeks was long enough for flowers to sprout, but at three weeks, the grass length made it harder for pollinators to get to any flowers.
The scientific consensus is to advise US homeowners to choose slow mowing, and it can be their gateway into thinking about other ways of managing their lawn.
As I have mentioned on this show many times, there is a long tradition of planting early blooming spring bulbs deliberately into lawns in Europe."The tiny bulbs are up and flowering long before the lawn starts to grow, and are then dispatched by the first mowing, and they still return year after year.
From the well-manicured studios of WDDIY FM in Bethlehem, PA, it is time for another turf war hour of chemical-free horticultural hijinks, you bet your garden.
I'm your host Mike McGrath, and in this week's In The News, we present a story by Becky Little, a freelance writer based in Washington, DC.
[news jingle] And I quote, "When spring rolls around in the Northern Hemisphere, so do conversations about No Mow May.
The idea is for homeowners to forgo mowing, allowing otherwise hidden flowers to bloom in your lawn, increasing your yard's biodiversity and providing food for pollinators like native bees.
However, scientists have increasingly questioned whether this trend, which began in the UK, is comparable with US lawns.
The group originally coined the slogan to encourage local UK councils to manage green spaces more like traditional hay meadows to increase biodiversity, according to Sarah Shuttleworth, a botanical advisor for Plant Life.
In the UK, she says, people's lawns are often kind of relic grasslands, and letting them grow can reveal native flowers they didn't know they had in their lawn.
Those flowers provide nectar and pollen for native bees and other local pollinators that evolved alongside these plants.
Soon, more than 30 US cities had adopted No Mow May initiatives, and many individual households have become interested in practicing it.
But at the same time, scientists began to question whether this was the right strategy for US lawns.
The United States has more varied climates compared to the UK, meaning that flowers bloom at very different times across the country.
In addition, the country's history of colonization means that a lot of the plants in US lawns, including the grasses themselves, are non-native species.
These non-native plants don't necessarily provide good support for native pollinators.
In 2024, Appleton announced that it was dropping No Mow May in favor of Slow Mow Summer.
The city now encourages residents to raise their lawnmowers' blades to four inches and wait to mow until the grass reaches six inches.
In 2018, the journal Biological Conservation published a study in which researchers mowed Massachusetts lawns at different intervals between May and September.
They were surprised to find that lawns mowed every two weeks yielded more pollinators than lawns mowed every week or every three weeks.
The theory is that this is because two weeks was long enough for flowers to sprout, but at three weeks, the grass length made it harder for pollinators to get to any flowers.
The scientific consensus is to advise US homeowners to choose slow mowing, and it can be their gateway into thinking about other ways of managing their lawn.
As I have mentioned on this show many times, there is a long tradition of planting early blooming spring bulbs deliberately into lawns in Europe."The tiny bulbs are up and flowering long before the lawn starts to grow, and are then dispatched by the first mowing, and they still return year after year.
The rest of this transcript — segmented and speaker-labeled, so you land on the exact moment something was said
Search every transcript — by keyword, by phrase, or by meaning, across every show Radar indexes
Trends — what is surging across podcasts, measured against its own baseline
Alerts — when a name you follow appears in a newly indexed episode
No account is needed to search Radar.