You’ve probably heard of organic lawn care products already.  If you have your own lawn care business you need to know more about them because they could have a marked effect on your business.

For starters if you can provide services for your clients that are 100% organic, that’s a great benefit to offer them.  We’re all concerned about the environment and everyone wants to do their bit to reduce the harmful effects we all have on the world around us.  Some products that are designed to help people take care of their lawns and gardens are packed full of nasties that are very far from being organic.  Why would you step up and offer that to your clients?

Just think about the advantage you will have by offering organic products to help take care of your clients’ lawns.  One key advantage is that you will instantly stand a better chance of snagging new customers.  The very mention of the fact you offer organic services and products can turn a query into a sale.  People want to know they are getting the best for their lawns.  If you can persuade them that organic products have a lot to offer – which indeed they do, and on many levels too – you are halfway to making a sale.

Using these products and providing this type of service will also help you stay ahead of the competition.  A lot of businesses are offering organic products now, and if you are one of the few that aren’t, you will be at a disadvantage.

One thing you should know is that some customers will want to know more about the organic stuff you’ll be using on their lawn.  Some of them may be happy to accept the fact that it’s organic and leave you to get on with the job.  But other clients might want to know more, so you should read up on what each product does and what it contains.

This means you won’t be caught out and have to rely on reading the bottle or packet when you are about to treat their lawn.  But it also means you will quite rightly appear to be very knowledgeable about your job and the products you use.  Don’t look like you’ve just swung by the store to pick up the organic products before starting work that day!

As you can see there are plenty of things you need to bear in mind when you are focusing on the organic side of your business.  If you’ll forgive the pun, this is the cutting edge of lawn care today.  Every lawn care professional owes it to themselves to make sure they know what products are on the market and how they can use them.  You need to be sure you can keep your clients’ lawns looking in tip top condition, and if you can do that with the use of natural products you’ll be streets ahead of anyone else.

Let me start by saying that ideally you should keep the number of times you mow wet grass to a minimum.  Grass is always better off mowed when it is dry.  Wet grass is liable to result in a haphazard cut, where the blades of grass aren’t all cut to the same length.

There will be times when you do find yourself having to mow grass that is not dry though, so it pays to be aware of what to watch for and what to expect.  For starters it pays to assess the state of the lawn before you get your mower out.  Don’t mow early on in the morning if you can possibly help it – the drier the grass is the better.

Remember too that if the grass is really wet the ground underneath will be wet as well.  This is very different from the top layer simply having a covering of dew on it.  Always assess the condition of the grass and decide from there whether it can be mowed or not.

The title of this article may have led you to assume that you can always mow wet grass.  But as you can see this isn’t the case.  Whoever you speak to in the industry, they will tell you that grass which is wet doesn’t cut easily.  You just need to explain this to your clients on occasion.  The blades of your mower will always have a much harder time going through wet grass than dry grass.

With that in mind, imagine carrying on mowing over a wet lawn.  Some of the grass will be cut easily while other patches may prove extremely difficult to cut.  So you go over them again.  You end up with a patchy effect and in some places you may even find you end up churning up the ground underneath the grass.  You could literally end up with a mess instead of a lawn if you aren’t too careful.

If you do decide to give a lawn a trim while it is wet, make sure you only trim it very slightly, instead of going for a deep cut.  This should minimize the danger of ruining the lawn, ripping out chunks of grass or digging into the grass.

Remember too that you should only be thinking about doing this if you own a petrol mower.  If you should have one that runs on electricity, remember what you were told about water and electricity not going together.  Only a petrol mower should ever be considered in this situation.

One final point – if you have a ride on mower you stand a better chance of using it successfully even after rain.  If you handle large gardens and clients with big properties you might consider buying one of these so you can carry on working even when the weather isn’t too good.

So you see there is a lot to think about when it comes down to mowing wet grass.  If you can possibly avoid it, do so.

Moss is incredibly hard to handle once it gets a foothold in anyone’s lawn.  If you have spotted a patch of it growing in a lawn you need to act as soon as possible to limit the damage it can do.

Some people don’t realize that once moss gets started, it won’t let the grass grow in the area it is occupying.  Grass is pretty resilient stuff, but there is no doubt that moss is even more so.  The question is what do you do about it?

One good thing to remember for starters is that moss occurs in lawns that don’t receive the ideal conditions they need to look good all year round.  This means that if something is missing from a lawn – for example moisture or the right nutrients in the soil – you will be more likely to see moss growing as a result.

There are various products around that can kill moss but there is a lot you can do to make sure you get rid of it in other ways as well.  The first thing is to keep the lawns you tend to in as good a condition as possible.  For example it will help to rake them over regularly because all lawns have dead grass lying in them – particularly if you don’t take adequate care of them.  Dead grass can lead to a lawn getting what is known as thatch – and this in turn can lead to moss.  Make sure you rake the grass regularly to get rid of all this dead material.

If you think about what moss loves (I’ll reveal the answer in just a moment) you will realize that you need to deprive it of these conditions.  For example it loves damp and moist conditions, so if you let a lawn get waterlogged it will take full advantage of it.  The solution to this is to aerate it regularly; you can buy special shoes that you strap on and walk around the lawn with.  These have spikes in the bottom so they are a nice and easy way of aerating it effectively.

Keeping lawns nice and short is another good thing to do.  Obviously you will them to look nice and neat anyway to appeal to the customer, but it will make it easier to keep an eye on the condition of the lawn when you are cutting it.

Of course there is also the option of using a proper treatment to get rid of moss.  There is nothing wrong with using these but the best course of action is to try the above techniques at the same time.  If you make the conditions harder for the moss to exist in as well as using the chemical treatment, you stand the best possible chance of success.

You now have the knowledge you need to rid every lawn of moss and prevent it from easily returning too.  This is an ongoing job but you’ll get great results if you keep at it.  Good luck!

If you have a good batch of clients you will constantly be getting your lawn mower out of the truck to use it during the summer.  It’s quite conceivable that you could go from house to house and mow half a dozen lawns in a single day.

You can see then that keeping your lawn mower in excellent condition is extremely important.  If you don’t you won’t get as much mileage out of it in the long run – and in the short run it could break down and render you unable to serve your clients.  That’s not exactly the best image to present to them is it?

So let’s explore how you should take good care of your lawn mower.  If your lawn mower runs on gas you’ll need to make sure that gas is fresh.  Your gas should never be more than around a month old, although if you are cutting lawns every single day you may find you are filling it up more often than that anyway.  It’s worth bearing in mind if you are just getting started with your lawn care business though, or in the quieter months when mowing isn’t as essential as it is in the summer.

Keeping it clean is another simple piece of advice that can easily get forgotten.  When you have mowed a lawn make sure you get rid of all the grass that is stuck to it.  Keep a stiff brush handy for this purpose and make it part of your personal mowing kit.  Besides anything else, leaving all that grass hanging around will make it more likely you will leave a trail from lawn to truck!

You should also check all the nuts and bolts frequently to make sure nothing has worked loose.  Some websites will tell you that you only need to do this every spring, before you start using your lawn mower again.  But if you are running a business you’ll be getting far more use out of your lawn mower than normal home owners would be.  This means you need to check it a lot more often.

Spark plugs should typically be replaced once they have seen a hundred hours of action.  Work out how long you use your mower for on a daily basis and then figure out how often you should change it.  Keep a fresh supply of spark plugs handy so you never get caught out.

Don’t forget the blades either!  If you want to cut your clients’ lawns to the best effect, you’ll need sharp blades to do it with.  The more experienced you get at mowing lawns the easier you will find it to gauge when those blades need sharpening.

As you can tell you may need to allocate some time at the start of your day to attend to some of these tasks.  You won’t need to do everything every day, but a little maintenance every now and then will help to keep your lawn care business – and your lawn mower – running smoothly

Lots of different people have a need to get hold of various items of lawn care equipment.  You might want to buy some if you have a garden of your own that you’d like to take better care of.  And you will definitely need some if you are going to start your own business providing landscaping and lawn care for people in your neighborhood.

The question is how much should you pay for it?  New lawn care equipment can be very expensive, and there are ways that you can get hold of it at a knock down price.  You do need to consider whether it is good value to buy second hand though, and the answer could vary depending on the situation and the particular piece of equipment you are buying.

For starters no two pieces of used lawn care equipment will be the same.  People have lots of reasons for getting rid of garden equipment.  For example someone might want to get rid of a leaf blower that is only a year old and has only been used once.  This could simply be because they are moving somewhere that doesn’t have a garden, or there are no trees there that will drop their leaves.

On the other hand they might be selling something simply to get rid of it because it has almost reached the end of its useful life.  As you can see it is very important to take a closer look at any piece of garden equipment you are thinking of buying.  That lawn mower might look great at first glance, but try turning it over to see what the underside is like.  After all this is the part that gets into close contact with the lawn, and it doesn’t matter how good the presentable bit looks, the blades need to be able to do the job properly.

Of course you can fully expect to have to replace certain parts of equipment that are subject to normal wear and tear.  The blades on a lawn mower are a classic example.  But you should look for other potential damage or problems that cannot be fixed as well, before buying anything second hand.

The main advantage of buying used equipment is that you will get it cheaper.  But you do need to consider whether it is a false economy.  For starters how long is that equipment likely to last now?  And will you still be able to buy spares for older equipment, or will you be stuck with something that won’t work in a few short months time?

Used lawn care equipment can provide a good stop gap if you cannot afford to buy brand new items.  But do consider all the options before you finally decide whether new or used is the best route for you.  What seems like a good value buy can be very far from it on occasion.  It all comes down to what it is, how much it is and how much you need it.

When most people need compost they go out and buy a bag from their local garden center.  But this is such a waste of money – you can create your own at home quite easily and you have everything you need close at hand to do it as well!

Compost is not only great for the environment it is also great for your garden.  And since you are a landscaper and lawn care expert, you could also use it when you are landscaping people’s gardens for them.

Nearly half of all our household waste could be readily turned into compost.  Provided you have the right equipment to create it with, you’ll find the whole process pretty much takes care of itself.

For starters get yourself a compost bin.  These are easily available locally, as are kitchen composters.  These are worth having since it will act as a tabletop reminder to think before you throw anything away.  Add compostable items to the kitchen composter and when it fills up, take it to your garden compost bin and throw it all in.

What can you throw in there?  You’ll often hear people who are into composting talking about greens and browns.  This is a good rule of thumb to remember as a good mix of these will produce the best compost.

When you are cutting your clients’ lawns make sure you clear away all the grass cuttings and take them away with you.  This is one of the green items.  You can also add in smaller weeds that don’t have seeds, and leftovers from pruning, provided they are kept small.  You can put these in your compost bin when you get back home, to recycle the clippings for your compost in future.  Don’t forget the tea and coffee either – this is great for compost.

As for brown items, anything related to paper products is perfectly fine, so all those cardboard tubes and newspapers can go in.  If you have any bedding plants that have only lasted a year and you are taking them out, keep those too.

The faster you fill it up the quicker you will get compost from the bottom of the bin.  You may find that the contents heat up as they start to mash down and combine with each other.  It sometimes pays to take the lid off and reach in to give everything a stir.  This gets it all active, mixes it in and encourages the microbes and other active elements to get going and will lead to it heating up as well.

If you focus on putting a lot of contents in your bin at once, and you turn them and ensure the contents heat up, you could have your first batch of compost in a few short weeks.  But for the most part it might take a year or so to get the results of your active recycling methods.  Either way the results are worth waiting for, and it will save you a fortune in having to buy it as well.

If you live near the ocean and you are wondering why your lawn just won’t stay green, there is a very good reason for it.  If you are a landscaper and you work for lots of clients in this kind of area, it’s worth finding out more about this problem.  It is likely you will be encountering it fairly often.

Let’s take a look first of all at why lawns can suffer from being in a saltwater area.  Put simply it is just because they have too much salt.  Most lawns can handle a bit of salt because it would be impossible to have none at all.  But in gardens which are right near the ocean or close to a saltwater lake for example, the amount of salt which comes down on the lawn is much higher.  And over time this will effectively poison the grass.

When this happens you can see it in action.  Instead of having a nice green lawn you’ll notice the tips of the grass will start to go brown.  But even if you meet a client whose lawn is looking exactly like this right now, you can do a lot to ensure you help them regain a nice green lawn.

The big secret – such as it is – lies in compost.  Compost contains nutrition from the various items that have rotted down in it.  Think about this for a moment and you will see the logic in it.  If you have new plants you want to put out in your garden, you won’t use old compost or soil from just anywhere.  You’ll buy a bag of compost or take some you’ve made yourself from your garden composter.  This helps give the new plant all the nutrition it needs to grow.

The same applies to any lawn in a saltwater area.  If you sprinkle some compost onto the lawn every now and then, you are adding extra nutrition to the grass.  This will counteract the effects of the saltwater and you will find that the grass starts to do better over time.

Of course you should always monitor the situation.  If you are being hired by the home owner to take care of their lawn on a regular basis this should be easy to do.  And because you are using your expert skills to tend to their lawn you will find that you can soon see the grass turning into a healthier green color again.

You can also add some fresh grass seed to the lawn over time, to encourage additional growth and to strengthen the lawn as a whole.  If any grass dies as a result of being damaged by saltwater, the extra seed will grow and replace it.

There is one other bonus to treating lawns like this too.  You might end up with lots of additional clients who live close to the client you are already working for.  They’ll all want to know how their lawn was saved!

Sod installation – it’s a job that every new landscaper will be asked to do sooner or later.  And bidding on that first one can be difficult.  You don’t have experience to back up your quotation with, and you want to be sure you get the best results possible.

So where do you start?

The answer is actually with questions.  Let’s say a home owner calls you up and says, “Can you come round and lay some new sod for me?”  That’s a reasonable question because it is what they want done.  But you should answer that with another question.  “Sure, I can quote you for that.  But can I ask why you need the job done?”

If you don’t know the answer or you don’t ask the question, you could be in for a nightmare job.  For example the home owner might have a huge mole problem and has mole hills all over their current lawn.  Now you could dig all that up, remove it and then lay a new lawn.  But before too long those mole hills will start appearing again, and bang goes the new lawn.

Put simply, if a problem has caused the existing lawn to founder, you need to solve that problem before laying a new one.  If you don’t, you’ll waste time and money – and so will the home owner.

Next up you need to know how much sod is required to lay the new lawn.  I would never go on what the home owner says here.  You need to see the lawn and measure it yourself, allowing for a bit of wastage here and there.  If you take their word for it, price the job, pick up the sod and then turn up at the property, you will be extremely lucky if it all goes according to plan.  Always price it yourself.

You also need to find out whether the sod will be delivered to the property or whether the client wants you to supply it.  If so you’ll need to account for doing so in your quotation.  Bear in mind you have to dig up and remove all the old sod as well.  If you are new to the business it’s easy to get so focused on how much new sod you will need and how much to charge for laying it, you forget to charge for taking the old stuff away.

Some lawn care businesses charge by the square foot, while others charge by the pallet.  There is no right or wrong way to do it, although the majority of people seem to go by the pallet.  Do whatever works for you, and make sure you have all the information you need before giving the client a solid quote.

Being thorough is more important than trying to underbid any other competing businesses.  If your quote misses out something essential or you neglect to ask the right questions, you could lose out.  The client may think you aren’t being thorough enough.  Show off your skills and efficiency and put in a bid they’ll be delighted with.

There are some questions that keep popping up over and over when it comes to lawn care, and one of them is the question of how often a lawn should be edged.  Edging a lawn makes it look far more superior and smarter to a lawn that isn’t taken care of in this way.  But once you have done the initial edging job, how often should you go back to keep it in good shape?

People differ in their opinion of how often this job should be done.  It is a good job to do once you have mowed the lawn in question, although it doesn’t necessarily have to be done all the time.  Some people will trim it up every single time they get the mower out, but if the grass hasn’t grown too long in between trims this may not be necessary.

It should certainly be done once a fortnight to keep it looking its very best though.  If you leave it any longer than this you will start to notice the edges are looking tatty and messy.  Keeping up appearances is important to a lot of garden owners, so you need to bear this in mind.

For example one important point concerns the question of whether regular edging is effective with regard to time.  Let’s suppose you plan to edge your lawn once a month and no more often than that.  You might find that doing this means you spend an hour doing the edging (assuming you have a reasonable size lawn to edge).

But what would happen time wise if you decided to cut this down to once a fortnight?  You might find that it only takes twenty minutes a time, since the grass hasn’t had as much time to grow.  This would save you a full twenty minutes in all, so while you are edging the lawn twice as often you are actually taking less time because the job is made easier.

You can see that time is just as worth considering as the results you get from doing it.  One thing you must be careful of is that you don’t overdo it when edging.  If you do you can start to go into the lawn itself, rather than simply trimming it.  Over time this will result in your edges encroaching on your lawn, and this won’t be good.

How frequently you edge will depend on the time of year as well.  For example during the summer the grass will grow more readily so you might find you want to start the edging process once a week rather than once a fortnight.  But during the winter you may not do much at all, since the grass won’t grow as much.  Always pay attention to the conditions around you so you can make the right choice for you.

Take a fresh look at your lawn now and see whether the edges are in good condition.  If they are looking straggly, you know it’s time to take care of them.

This is one of the most important questions you can ask with regard to your lawn.  It’s natural to assume that you should cut it short every time you mow it, regardless of what length it is to start with.  This is particularly tempting to do if your lawn is long and straggly, and you long to have a decent bit of grass to walk on and relax on.

But this is the worst thing you can do.  Grass can easily go into shock and if you cut it too much this is exactly what will happen.  So instead, make sure you take a look at the current length before you actually think about mowing it.

Some people think long grass is a bad thing, and only a tight short lawn will do.  But interestingly enough, if your grass is longer the roots will grow longer as well.  The deeper the roots go the stronger they will be, and that in turn leads to good grass.  There are other things involved too of course, such as good aeration to allow water to permeate the lawn, but this is one of the basics.  If you don’t have a good root system you won’t have a very good lawn.

So if in doubt, make sure you cut your lawn higher than you would like to.  You’ll find also that you get fewer weeds by doing this as they won’t have as much room to grow.  Your lawn will also benefit from being slightly spongier thanks to the longer blades of grass.  This makes it more appealing to sit on, lie on and have the kids playing on as well.

A good rule of thumb to follow is the ‘one third’ rule.  No matter how long or short your grass is, never remove more than a third of it at a time.  If you remove more you will put the lawn at risk of being baked during the summer, as it won’t be able to withstand the higher temperatures.  Keeping the lawn cut to this ratio also means you don’t have to worry about the grass going into shock.

No matter when you cut your lawn or how much you take off, you should always rake your lawn after you have cut it.  If you don’t, you will end up with a higher chance of developing thatch.  This is basically a build up of dead stuff and grass cuttings that bed down and get caught up in the grass.  You don’t need anything on your lawn except for actual, real, growing grass.  Anything else should be removed.

You will have to keep a closer eye out for thatch forming if you do decide to keep the length of your grass higher all year round.  Because it is longer, thatch is more able to form easily without you seeing it, so make sure you don’t let it build up.

Whatever you do, don’t forget the one third rule. This is the best piece of advice to give anyone who is about to mow their lawn.