Johnny Soto

Every year thousands of folks dream about starting a lawn care business. The idea of being your own boss, working outside during the best times of the year while getting a tan make this industry very attractive to the typical office dweller or anybody who wants to be a lawn care business owner. The unfortunate thing is that as a lawn company owner, you are at the mercy of the weather when you are managing your outdoor service business.

Weather Affects Your Entire Business

When you perform lawn services for clients and have a full schedule of jobs for an entire workweek, the weather is going to affect your lawn care and landscaping company. If a rainy or unseasonably cold day arrives, you must be prepared to work on the weekend or at a minimum change your dinner plans because you’ll need to work from sun up to sun down to catch up since the rainy weather stopped your service production. Weather can put a strain on your business plan, as well as your personal life as well. If a family member or friend has plans, they may need to be adjusted if a rainy day occurs and you must work late the next day.

mowing a lawn — Getting the mowing done no matter what

Beating The Weather

Many lawn care company owners will book out their work for five, eight hour days. This can cause issues with their employees when it rains because then they have to work on the weekend, when most don’t want to work as they want to enjoy time with their friends. This can bring down morale across the organization and can make for a negative environment. You want to avoid this at all costs.

The solution to setting up your lawn mowing workweeks is to have Monday through Thursday be your days to perform regular services by working ten hour days, to allow Fridays for extra jobs such as landscape maintenance or use them as a catch up day in the event of inclement weather. This is a technique taught in the best online lawn care start up training guide, where you can learn insider strategies for starting, operating, and managing a profitable lawn care business. The guide will also teach you how to plan for inclement weather when it affects your lawn business.

Overtime For Your Lawn Care and Landscaping Crews

The best thing about having four work days with ten hour days is that Friday opens the door for your team of workers to get overtime. If you’re new to business ownership, overtime is where employees get paid time and a half or double their typical hourly rate when working because they’ve worked over forty hours in a week’s period. Employees that are motivated to work will thoroughly enjoy this because they’re getting paid more. When you have your work weeks set up like this, it’s important to be aware of your costs of doing business so that you bid higher for the extra jobs since your employees are paid overtime, it will cost more per hour they are working on the job site. The positive takeaway for this is that your firm is making more money with the extra jobs and your employees are making more money for doing extra work that isn’t apart of the everyday, normal grind that they’re used to.

What is Lawn Mowing?

Maintaining a rough lawn at your home only requires occasional cutting with a suitable machine, or grazing by animals. Keeping a lawn and grass area smooth and closely cut at your home, be it for aesthetic or practical reasons or due to social pressures from neighbors and local municipal ordinance requires it, necessitates more organized and regular treatments. Usually once a week is adequate for maintaining a lawn in most climates. However, in the hot and rainy seasons of regions contained in hardiness zones greater than eight, lawn areas may need to be maintained up to two time per week.

Further In-Depth On Care Of Your Lawn

Summer lawn care requires raising the mower machine’s blades for cool season grasses, and lowering it for warm season grasses. In order to remain green (preventing dormancy), most grass lawns will require longer and more frequent watering, best done early in the morning or evening to reduce evaporation. When grass is actively growing is also the best time to apply an all purpose fertilizer to help keep the turf green and build strong roots.

In the autumn season, thatch build up that occurs in warm season grasses should be removed, although some lawn experts’ opinions are divided on this subject. This is also a good time to add a sandy loam top dressing and apply a fertilizer containing some type of wetting agent. Cool season lawns can be planted in autumn if there is adequate rainfall.

Maintaining a lawn with groundskeeping work

Lawn care in the winter is minimal for most areas if your location does not experience the ground freezing and snow, requiring mostly light feedings of organic material such as green waste compost and minerals to encourage earthworms and beneficial microbes to thrive. The topic alone of organic materials for fertilizing lawns will be designated for a different and separate blog post of its own as it requires intricacies that would be too much for this post.

Recommended Grass Cutting Procedures

Mowing regularly with a sharp blade at an even height

Now mowing when the lawn is wet

Removing no more than 30% of the plant tissue in any one cut

Alternating the direction of cut from the previous mowing

Scarifying and dethatching, then sweeping and raking to remove dead grass, leaves and other debris to prevent tufting

Rolling the lawn to encourage tilling (branching of grass plants) and to firm the ground for sports turf field

Top dressing with sand, soil or other material

Aeration with a spike aerator or plug aerator to relieve compaction of the soil and allow greater absorption of nutrients

Seeding to cover patchy areas and maintain thick turf

There are so many more things that must be done, so stay tuned to the latest posts to learn more!

Author: Johnny Soto

Paying Attention To The Weather With Lawn Care and Landscaping