 Let's get started with our second talk tonight and learn about a new trend in lawn care. And here to describe bee lawns, that is like bees that go buzz lawns, is Dr. Esther McGinnis. Esther is an associate professor in the Department of Plant Sciences. She's an extension horticulture specialist and also the director of the North Dakota Master Gardener Program. She and her graduate students conduct research on pollinator attraction, as well as rain garden plants. So Esther, welcome to the forums. Thank you, Tom. I'm glad to be here tonight. Well, we seem to have a little bit of a theme going tonight, particularly with the insects and such, but we're gonna specifically focus on bee lawns. Well, let's first just talk about lawns and put that into perspective. So lawns occupy a huge amount of real estate in the United States. So if we were to aggregate all the commercial, public and residential turf, so think about all of the lawn surrounding businesses, think about public parks and fields, think about backyards and front yards and side yards aggregated together that's over 63,000 square miles, about 2% of US land area. So this makes it the largest irrigated crop in the United States. And just to belabor the point, if we were to put all that land together, it would be the size of Texas. To compare this to agronomic crops, this is a little bit less than US wheat acreage. So what we do in our lawns really matters, but our turf has become a monoculture. Now, this didn't always used to be the case, but we've gotten so good at just growing these lawns that are lush and green without any flowering weeds in it. And this didn't always used to be the case. I remember my father wanted to have the perfect lawn. So when I was growing up, we used to have white clover and he was always trying to eradicate it. He was putting down two, four D and he never seemed to make a dent in it. But more recently, we've got better herbicides. We have combination herbicides of three different chemicals that totally, totally eradicates white clover, gets rid of dandelion and some of these other flowering weeds. And I admit, I've been guilty of doing programming to help homeowners kill all their lawn weeds and to achieve the perfect lawn. But really, is this perfection? We've got noted ecologist Doug Tellamy and he calls lawns ecological dead zones. Now, I think he overstates it a bit. I mean, lawns do have some environmental benefits. They prevent erosion, you know, they keep the temperature cooler than if you had pavement and such. But what I think he really means is that our lawns are not good habitat for our pollinators. So our weed-free lawns, you know, if you were looking at that previous photo, there was really nothing there for a bee. There was nothing there for butterflies. There was just no food. So really a food desert for them. But it's really important. So we know that our pollinators are declining. We need to do something about them. Now, here in the Master Gardener Program, we have made it our mission to increase pollinator habitat all across North Dakota and our surrounding states. Now, we have been certifying pollinator gardens all across the region and asking people to plant native flowering plants as well as ornamental flowering plants in their flower gardens. And that's been a great program for us, but we wanna go further. We want to expand and create more habitat for pollinators. So imagine if we could make lawns more sustainable, we would get more bang for our buck if we could focus some of our attention there to making it more pollinator friendly. So the question is, can our turf be adapted to nourish pollinators? And the answer is absolutely yes. We can incorporate short flowering plants into the lawn. We can reincorporate the white clover that my father was trying so desperately to kill. And there are a number of flowering plants that can be adapted into our turf, but they need to have certain characteristics. First of all, they need to have a perennial lifestyle life cycle because we don't wanna be continuously planting or seeding into our lawns. The flowering plants that we adopt need to be compact. We want them to be growing at a shorter height so they're not towering over our lawns. That looks messy. Even if we do a bee lawn, we still want it to look good and to meet community standards. Flowering plants need to tolerate mowing on a regular basis and they've got a flower at a shorter height just because they are mowed. And then from the bee perspective, they need to provide good quality food. So they need to provide nectar and or pollen. So nectar is that sugary substance. So it's really a carbohydrate. So our bees love carbohydrates just like we do. Our bees also need a protein source and that's what pollen provides. And the pollen is so very important, particularly for our bee larvae that are developing. Other characteristics of the flowering plants we would integrate into bee lawns. It's gotta be able to tolerate some lawn traffic. So it's gotta be able to tolerate you walking across the lawn and the kids playing a little bit. And then the flowering plants need to be aggressive enough that they can coexist with our turf grasses. So this is really quite a list and it's a difficult list to fulfill. We're fortunate because our neighbors, the University of Minnesota has done a lot of research on this. They had a grad student that spent a number of years in studying flowering plants and trying to find the right mix to create a bee lawn. So they came up with this mix. The base of it would be comprised of four species of fine fescues. Our fine fescues are low-maintenance turf grass. So it makes sense to start off with a sustainable turf grass before we add in our flowers. Our fine fescues are known for being drought tolerant. They're known for needing less fertilizer and they don't need to be mowed as frequently as Kentucky bluegrass. This particular mix has three different flowering species that have been introduced to it. The Dutch white clover as I mentioned, self-heal and creeping time. We'll start off with Dutch white clover and really of the three, this is the most important, this is the most dominant, this is the workhorse of the bee lawn. And frankly, some of you may already have a bee lawn and you didn't even know it. So I know there's gotta be listeners out there that have Dutch white clover in your lawns and good for you. But for those of us that have more of that green carpet of a lawn, we really do wanna introduce the Dutch white clover into it. Clover is a legume and this is a great feature for it to have because the roots have these nodules that fix nitrogen. So anytime we introduce a legume into our lawns, we don't have to fertilize as much. Dutch white clover, it has its peak flowering in June, but it will bloom sporadically through the rest of the summer. From the bee's point of view, this is good eating, great quality because it has high protein in the pollen and it has a high amount of carbs, self-heal. So this is probably a species you haven't heard of. It's in the mint family. So another low-growing plant, but it has purple flowers. Anything in the mint family is absolutely fabulous when it comes to our bumblebees and to our native bees. There's an amino acid that's produced by the mint family that is particularly good for the bees. Now our self-heal is a great nectar plant. It doesn't do so much as far as pollen production though. Self-heal, it grows in sun and in part shade, blooms throughout the summer. Unfortunately, it's not as good for our audience in Western North Dakota and in Western South Dakota. However, it would do better in the eastern half of the Dakotas and into Minnesota because it tends to like heavier soils. It tends to like more moisture. The third component is the creeping time. This is related to the herb. And in fact, I used to grow creeping time in my backyard in the Twin Cities. It was a nice ground cover. It was well-behaved, it was low-growing and then it would bloom from July into fall. A very good nectar plant. This is one that prefers full sun and this is better for lighter soils, for loamy and sandier soils. But when it comes to the three species, the creeping time and the self-heal are kind of a bonus. It's really the Dutch white clover that does the majority of the work. And that's what we're recommending. Now, would you consider planting a b-lon? Would you be open to experimenting here? No, I'm not suggesting that you rip out your entire lawn and plant a b-lon. What about experimenting with a small patch? Maybe five by 10 feet in your backyard or maybe just a patch in the boulevard? So we understand there's a psychological barrier here and I know we're gonna be spending a lot of time trying to break down that psychological barrier. But maybe it won't seem as scary if you could just experiment and do a small patch and see if you're comfortable with it. The other psychological barrier is that people are afraid of stinging insects. However, we need to realize that there are different kinds of insects. Unfortunately, people mix up those that are in the wasp classification versus the bees. And for the most part, the wasps are more aggressive than the bees. And I'm including hornets and yellow jackets in this classification too. But overall, the wasps have a more aggressive attitude. They can sting many times without dying. And I know Jan brought that up in the previous hour. And they're also predators, they're hunters. They will go and kill other insects. So they do have a little bit more of a macho attitude, if you will. Now our yellow jackets are part of this group and they're the ones drawn to meat and soft drinks. So if you're having this picnic at the end of summer and you're being bothered by something, it's most likely a yellow jacket of some sort. Now our bees are less aggressive for a couple of reasons. They only sting once and they die. So if you're a bee, you don't wanna go around indiscriminately stinging people because you will die. So our bees are less likely to sting. They will only do so if they feel threatened or if they're feeling defensive. So they'll do this to protect the other bees in the colony or in the hive. Bees also have a less aggressive attitude because they're herbivores. So as I mentioned, they sip nectar from plants. They collect pollen. So they have a whole different attitude than the bees. All right, so I'm gonna present this mnemonic that was developed by my fabulous master gardener, Caitlin Stegmiller. And this was previously published in our Dirt Newsletter. But she did this wonderful mnemonic to tell the difference between a Western yellow jacket, which is a type of wasp and a European honeybee. So a wasp has a very narrow waist. So you'll see, hopefully my cursor here, you'll see that it has this really thin pinched waist. I wish my waist was like that. It's not, I'll tell you. The wasps and our yellow jackets are attracted, the yellow jackets in particular are attracted to our picnics, to our meats and to our soft drinks. They're shiny in appearance because they're less hairy. And as I mentioned, they're hunters, they're predators. The mnemonic for the bee is they're bushy. They have a hairier body, so they don't have that pinched waist and you can see they're hairier. That's particularly true of our bumblebees. Our bumblebees are very hairy creatures. I call them flying teddy bears. Our bees collect pollen and sip nectar and they're more easy going. So they're not likely to sting unless threatened. So I find that people are more accepting of bees if they understand that they've most likely been stung by a wasp as opposed to a bee. All right, so as you're going about doing a bee lawn, carefully choose a planting site. First of all, check your city ordinances to make sure that this is allowed. And in most cases, it will be. We're not advocating for a really tall lawn but just check your city ordinances to be sure. Start a conversation with your neighbors. If your neighbor has a bee allergy, you're gonna wanna be considerate. You wanna maintain that relationship. So you're not gonna wanna plant a bee lawn right next to a neighbor that has a bee allergy. Or if they're a neighbor that wants to have that perfect lawn, if you're gonna do a patch of bee lawn, maybe do it then on the other side of your house or do it in the backyard where they can't see it. So we believe it's good to maintain relationships with your neighbors. When you're choosing your planting site, you can certainly choose the backyard if you're less comfortable with it, if you don't want the neighbors to see. Or if you're a little bit more bold, you can certainly do it in the front yard and maybe put a sign out to educate your neighbors as to what you're doing. Choose a low traffic area to do this because I mean, you want the bees to feel comfortable. So if you've got an area that has constant traffic, that's not a good area for them. And then choose a full sun location. Partial sun is okay too, but you'll get the best flowers from your bee mix if you're doing this in full sun. Couple of different ways of starting this. Now, if you've got a weedy area or if you wanna do it from scratch, you can certainly do a new planting. What you would do in this situation is you can, you can take a sod cutter, remove the sod, you can certainly spray with herbicide because you really want this area to be quite weed free as you're getting started. You can lightly till it or rake it, but you wanna have a smooth planting surface or a smooth seed bed. You would broadcast the seed, maybe do a tiny bit of raking there. You don't want the seeds to go too deep and then you would water for the first 30 days. So light frequent sprinkles, don't flood the area. For some of you that have an existing lawn, you may want to overseed into it. So this works better if your lawn isn't too weedy. You could do a couple of things. You could do a bee lawn mix that you overseed or maybe you may just want to overseed with Dutch white clover. So you do have some options here. But in order for this to work, in order for you to overseed into the existing lawn, you do need to injure the lawn a little bit. What you would do is you would scalp the lawn. You cut the lawn down to one inch in height and that makes the lawn a little less competitive as you're overseeding it. What's even better is in combination, if you were to core aerate, that also helps with this process and you would more likely to have some exposed soil so that when you broadcast the seed or overseed, you'll have some seed to soil contact. But once again, you're gonna want to water, water that seed in and frequently sprinkle for those first 30 days to get it established. So when's the best time to do this? There are a couple of times we're trying the August seeding. So this is what we did with our campus bee lawn. We seeded in early August and I'm working with Ellen Zook on our bee lawn. It's cooler to do so in early August. And of course the temperatures will drop off. It's just easier to establish a lawn of any type at that time and you have fewer weed seeds germinating. That just makes the process so much easier. One fabulous way of doing this is to do dormant seeding. And a lot of universities recommend dormant seeding for bee lawns, particularly if we've got seed that needs a little bit of a cold treatment. So what you do is you wait till there's been a killing frost until everything is pretty much brown and dead. This tends to be late August into November. Then you broadcast the seed after you've prepared whether your seed bed or whether you've mowed the lawn really short. So you broadcast the seed at that point in time but you don't want the seed to germinate in fall. You wanna get it down and then you pray for snow cover to insulate the seed, protect it from birds and then as the snow melts in spring, you'll have your bee lawn germinating. You can in fact do spring seeding. However, I don't recommend spring seeding of bee lawns or any lawns in particular just because there's more weed seeds that are germinating at that time of year. So that's more work. Okay, once you've established your lawn you would treat it as a low maintenance lawn and you wanna mow it at a little bit higher height. So maybe raise your mower deck about three and a half, four inches tall and then don't mow as low as often. You want that clover to bloom, you want the self-heal or other blooming species to bloom. So maybe mow every other week or if it's really hot during summer and your lawn isn't growing as often you could go three, four weeks. So don't be in a rush to mow. The other thing to think about is you don't have to fertilize as often because we've got legumes that were introduced. So we would advocate if you start a bee lawn you only have to fertilize it once a year do so around Labor Day and you should be good. Weeding is a little bit different process. You can't spray your whole yard with a lawn herbicide like Trimac or Weed Be Gone. You can't use weed and feed granules over the bee lawn. So your options are you can tolerate a few weeds some individuals if it's a small enough patch will hand pull. If you're comfortable with herbicides what I would recommend and what I would do is to spot spray the weeds that you don't want. So say for example, you've got a bee lawn and you don't want the dandelions you can certainly spray the dandelions with a lawn herbicide but just spot spray being careful not to hit the clover. Now, if you're comfortable with dandelions that's also a good pollinator plant but we understand that not everybody wants dandelions in their yard and your neighbors may not feel comfortable with that. All right, so we are starting a three year project with this. We planted our bee lawn plots on campus in August of last year. We also have a couple different kinds of bee mixes that we're trialing. So we're gonna be evaluating this as we go through the season. We don't expect the clover to be really dominant until maybe the end of this summer. It takes a couple growing seasons for the clover to come into its own and it will be even better in 2023. If you wanna come and see our turf plots and our bee lawn plots come visit us for our campus field day. As for our master gardeners, we're going to be having programming where our master gardeners are gonna be able to apply for grants to do bee lawns to do county programming in conjunction with some of our pollinator gardens that we have around the state. And we're certainly gonna be having tours. So if you haven't made up your mind about bee lawns you could certainly take a look as we get our bee lawn demonstration plots established. For psychological purposes, we know some people may not be comfortable doing a bee lawn unless we have like a sign that we're offering. Now this helps educate your neighbors that you are conserving pollinators. We are going to be purchasing signs similar to this. It's not gonna say pollinator garden. It's gonna say certified bee lawn. But this is something that you can stick in your yard and let your neighbors know that you are being sustainable, that you are in fact allowing certain weeds to nourish the pollinators in your yard. We don't have our application ready yet for the certified bee lawn sign. But if you get on our interest list here we will send you the application in a month or two once we have readied our application. So we're going to be giving out these free signs if you meet our application requirements. So I've got some acknowledgments. I have to acknowledge Jan Knodl and Patrick Boze. They're just great partners in all of our pollinator programming. And we really enjoy working with Jan and with Pat. They included us in their extension IPM program grant for North Dakota, which was funded by the USDA NIFA Extension Implementation Program. So that's part of the funding that we have received to do our programming with respect to bee lawns. We also have programming money to do Monarch monitoring for the next coming two and a half years. So thank you to Jan and Pat. And then thank you for the funding to USDA NIFA. And at this point, I'll take questions. Okay, thanks Esther. And let's all try to keep everything answers brief so we can get to as many as we can. Sure. Okay, this person loves dandelions and they got some pink dandelion seed, whatever that is. So can they add that to their bee lawn? Absolutely, absolutely. So dandelions are one of the first to bloom in the spring and they really help some of our pollinators that emerge in early spring. So dandelions, very important pollinators, but we certainly understand that there are some individuals that may be less comfortable with it. That's why they're not included in the bee lawn mixes. Okay, how does white clover spread by roots or seeds or what? Both. So seed production does take place with respect to white clover. They also spread via rhizomes too. So you will get clumps that spread too. Esther, people want to know where they can get that bee lawn mix. All right, so the bee lawn mix, the one I showed you is from Twin City Seed out of Minneapolis or Edina. I purchased mine right off of Amazon. So they are retailing their product on Amazon. I'll tell you, it's expensive. So I'm not saying to go and necessarily purchase that particular mix. If you would prefer, you could certainly do your own mix where you purchase a mix of fine fascues. So the four fine fascues, and then mix it maybe with some white clover. That might be cheaper. So we certainly understand. So I'm not advocating that you necessarily purchase the bee lawn mix that I showed because that's fairly expensive. But you can purchase white clover from, actually some of the big box stores are now starting to sell white clover online. But certainly some of your seeds can be purchased from local co-ops. I mean, we've, I think we're vards and maybe Agassi seed here in the valley might be selling white clover seeds. So that might be cheaper if you mixed your own. Are there any special varieties of white clover that are made for bee lawns? Not a special variety. We're just going for the species here. I know there's some that tend to be a little bit more pink, but we're just going for the run-of-the-mill white clover. There are other clovers out there, but they're not perennial, they're annual. So I know they sell micro clovers, they sell some of the crimson clovers, but they are not hardy for North Dakota. Okay. How about since you want such a beautiful, colorful lawn, how about creeping Charlie or a Juga? Are they good for bees? They are not. Creeping Charlie does not really have any pollinator benefits. So that's unfortunate. So that's one that doesn't. I suppose if I had to think of other lawn weeds that might have some benefits, maybe some of those violets that get established in the lawn might help some of the butterflies, but not creeping Charlie. Okay, that's too bad. How about self-heal? You said that's a mint. So is that like peppermint or spearmint and could it get aggressive? To tell you the truth, I don't think it's going to get as aggressive. In the University of Minnesota trials, I've heard through the grapevine that self-heal was not as aggressive as the white clover. So we don't have to worry about it being like some of our mints that take over. So what we've known with the self-heal is that you'd be lucky to get a few of them establishing. So I wouldn't worry about it. Okay, speaking of aggressiveness, how do you prevent a bee lawn from taking over your entire area? Well, you could certainly plant it in a confined area. So I mentioned a boulevard situation which is between the sidewalk and the street. So that's in a nice contained area. Now, if it's in a backyard and you'll only want to do a patch, you could certainly use herbicide to control the size of the patch. So on the outside, if you didn't want it getting any larger, you could certainly spray it and control it that way. So there are definitely ways where you could keep it in check. How about creeping time? Does that do well in shaded areas or do any of these bee lawn ingredients besides the fine fescue do well in shaded areas? I wouldn't say deep shade. I would say maybe light shade. I did have creeping time on, oh, let's see, at the base of one of my walls here when I was living in the Twin Cities. It was able to take some shade later in the day and such, but these really are meant for full sun to partial sun. Self-heal in white clover would be able to take a little bit of shade, no problem. Okay, how about that creeping time? Like does that smell nice when you walk barefoot on it? Does that give a nice fragrance? If you bruise the leaves, yes. Yes. Now, the one thing is I don't know how hardy the creeping time is in certain areas of North Dakota. So I have to be honest about that. We haven't done trials. Will that be hardy up into zone three? Will it do well if it doesn't have a snow cover? So that we don't know. That's why we're just right now focusing on the white clover. Okay, how about you wouldn't believe this question? This person must have some shape or something that mow their grass because this person's worried about the toxicity of any of these plants to animals. Oh, let's see here. Now clover, I wouldn't worry about. I mean, I mean, I've seen pets do clover. Clover is certainly introduced into pastures and such. I wouldn't worry about that. Now the fine fescus are, I mean, they're a grass. Now, there's certainly certain grasses that have endophytes, but I don't think that's part of this. So I'm not aware of these having any sort of toxicity, but I haven't looked up self-heal as far as toxicity. Come on, what's wrong? Who's feeding their pets grass? Come on, man, this kind of off-the-wall questions going on here, fun, but off-the-wall. Okay, how about yarrow? It's aggressive. This person just mows it down so it doesn't bloom very much, but it's nice and ferny, got a nice texture. Are you gonna add a yarrow ingredient here to the North Dakota B-lawn mix, maybe? I already have. Oh, really? I was only able to give a 20-minute presentation here, so I didn't talk about the Oregon State mixes that I'm trying that have both clover and yarrow in it. I have trialed at the University of Minnesota when I was a grad student. I did do some low-maintenance turf trials that I had to help my advisor evaluate, and yarrow was part of it, fabulous, absolutely fabulous when it comes to incorporating that into a low-maintenance lawn, and it does have benefits for the pollinators. Okay, how about, have you ever heard of L-psych clover? Is that the same as white clover? L-psych, I can't. Or does it have the same effect? L-psych clover, I think is used for cover crops. I can't remember which species that is, but I think if someone were to Google it, it would be something that's used for cover crops, and I have a feeling it's not perennial. It may just be an annual. Okay, how do you tell whether or not you've got Dutch white clover in your yard? Well, I would look for the plants and they would be shorter. You've got all sorts of other clovers out there, but Dutch white clover is going to have that clover leaf that I showed you. Oh, I should have left my screen up, but it has that clover leaf to it, and then it has those little puff ball white flowers on it. So it's really easy to identify that compared to others. If you're having issues, maybe just Google Dutch white clover. This person has a low area in their boulevard. Maybe there was a tree that was removed at one time. Should this person add soil before seeding with clover? I believe so. I believe so. Like a normal grass or any lawn covering, huh? Absolutely. Okay, I think we've got it all over. We're all in. Okay, since you have tested so many different types, you're the person to answer this. Prairie violet or a common blue violet or Canada anemone, would they be good choices in our B lawn? The violets, yes. So the violets, we know they can take mowing because we get questions from all these people that want us to help them eradicate it from their lawn. But as I mentioned, some of the violets are good plants, particularly for our butterflies. I know less about whether they are good for the bees, but we know that some of our violets are important for bee life cycles. Okay, you got it all covered there. Thanks for sharing that new trend with us. We're all gonna think about getting some clover in our yard, sounds good. My Irish mother would be so happy with that. Okay, thank you, Esther. Thank you.