Again I have not posted in a while, I have been very busy with work plus the summer weather is keeping me outside!
Anyhow, this year I have been mowing lawns 4 days a week, and on Mondays we have been doing miscellaneous lawn care work. Whenever I perform an estimate, I tell them we will do the work on a Monday.
Some of the work we do is clearing brush, laying stones, mulching, cutting down small trees.
I have had a lot of practice estimating now and I know approximately how long the job will take.
Lawn care estimating is a skill you will pick up and realize it is not too hard. I generally try to charge $50 per man hour, I was told that you want to charge at least 3x the hourly rate you pay your workers. I feel the pay rate is slightly lower for other work besides lawn mowing but I am sure it depends highly on your area. I know some people around here charge $40 per hour but I think that I have a good company image and am able to charge slightly more.
Most of my lawn estimates happen in the early Spring, but I will occasionally do some estimating in the fall regarding spring cleanups etc.
Hi all,
It has been a while since I wrote, as I have been busy developing my fertilizing programs as well as finishing up the snow plowing.
Fertilizing can be tricky especially in a business. I have developed three different synthetic fertilizing programs, and two organic programs. I modeled my programs off of larger companies such as Trugreen Chemlawn and seascape which operates out of New England. I also consulted our local extension as well as my fertilizer supplier for advice and input.
In order to put down fertilizer you need to have a pesticide license. This can be obtained via courses at your local university. The course costs approximately $500 but it will give you a license and make you more legit and legal. I have had some trouble estimating lawn care in the past, however, I think I finally have the estimating process down. I have developed a formula based off the square feet of the lawn that helps me develop accurate estimates for both my synthetic and organic fertilizing programs.
So this year we decided to start snow plowing to keep us busy during the winter with our lawn care business. We bought a used truck and a plow for $6500. The plow is a minute mount and the truck is a 1999 ford f350 4×4. It seems like a solid truck although it has been in the shop a lot since we originally purchased it.
Snow plowing aka snow removal should be an interesting venture for us. We were able to easily pick up accounts for our lawn care business by contacting existing customers and doing some online advertising. So far we have 14 accounts and we have plenty of leads still flowing in since it is early.
Starting a lawn mowing business was a challenge in itself but snow plowing will be an even greater challenge. I will keep you posted on how our snow removal venture goes.
Now is the time of year to aerate your lawn.
This is a mechanical process where pieces of your soil are removed by a machine called an Aerator. It helps to improve drainage, allows nutrients and water to reach the soil, and preps the soil for over seeding.
To rent an aerator costs about $60 or a half a day. Buying an aerator on how to aerate your lawn is not economical because it costs about $4000.
Some good aerators are the Ryan Lawnaire 28 and the Plugr PL850. These are good commercial machines.
When you aerate you will want to make sure the soil is wet the night before so the plugs come out more easily. You will want to mark sprinkler heads to make sure that you do not hit them with the machine.
To learn more you can visit How to Aerate Lawn.
I performed an estimate today for a lawn care customer requesting to have their lawn renovated. The lawn was full of crabgrass and needed an entire lawn renovation in order to fix the problem.
I researched this and I found that the best way to accomplish this would be to spray the entire lawn with a selective herbicide to kill the existing crabgrass. I may have to also do a follow up spray to the lawn to make sure everything dies. I will spray it with Round Up, or glyphosate. This will kill the crabgrass from the roots to make sure it is gone for good.
Next I will rent a Toro Dingo and rent the box rake attachment for this lawn renovation. This will create a nice seed bed. Finally I will obtain a soil test and add any necessary amendments to the soil such as limestone or compost.
After laying the seed I will cover it with peat moss.
I will tell the customer to water the lawn 2x a day to always keep the seed moist. Once it is established we will continue to fertilize the lawn and this is how I will perform this lawn renovation.
For more insight visit starting a lawn mowing business.
I like to go for runs to keep in shape, and I like to make sure I have the best shoe for it.
My favorite running shoes are New Balance and most recently I have just tried Nike.
Although New Balance is still my favorite running show, I am open to other possibilities.
I usually get the trail running shoes, as I feel they are better overall in case I want to use them for regular everyday use or hiking etc. They have better traction and personally I like the style better.
I always make sure to stretch before I go out for a run so I don’t get sore the next day. Also I cannot go for a run unless I have music with me. So when I am running on trails or on the road I can zone out and just enjoy the exercise.
I was reading the site Trail Running Shoes and it had a lot of valuable information there.
Today I was researching lawn sweepers. I have read about them but I didn’t know too much.
Of course you want to choose the best one, but where do you start? Of course there are several factors like the price, what you will be sweeping up with it in your lawn, and how big your yard is. Keep in mind that your lawn sweeper may fill up easily also if you have a small area to store the debris within the machine.
A lawn sweeper is an alternative to blowing and bagging the leaves since it does this whole process in one step. However, I fear that this would not be practicle for commercial use as it would not have enough storage and large commercial blowers are probably better for picking up leaves and lawn debris.
However, if you are looking for a homeowner solution, this may be for you. You can find more information if you go to Best Lawn Sweeper.
Today I was researching lawn mowing software.
Currently I use QuickBooks 2009 and it works well. I use this in combination with excel and google docs to do my scheduling etc.
However I heard about Gopher lawn mowing software and I decided I would download it and check it out. Apparently they give a free 30 day trial so I had nothing to lose.
I noticed off the bat that it was a very small download.
When I opened the program I thought that the layout was very basic. It seemed like poorly made lawn mowing software. I then went online onto lawnsite and the like and I found that it had poor reviews. People said the account part of it was not very useful and that the customer support was very poor and they never offered updates to the glitchy software.
Oh well. I will try looking into other lawn mowing business software but for the mean time I am sticking with excel and quickbooks which is outlined on my website lawn mowing software.
I have been frustrated lately because I can’t find a landscape gardener to subcontract. I don’t know enough on my own and I have just been learning about types of grasses and soil tests.
So I decided that rather than getting into something I don’t understand that I could find someone that already knows how to do gardening and has some knowledge about shrubs etc.
So where do you find a landscape gardener?
Networking. I originally called random contractors from the newspaper but I wasn’t sure who I could trust.
So I called around and I found a local gardener that should work out really well.
She charges $35/hr so I told her to bid jobs at $40/hr and that I would earn $5/hr off the job.
But the biggest thing is that now as a lawn care professional, I can now refer them to an experienced landscape gardener rather than just telling them that “I don’t know”
Start a lawn mowing business
Hey there guys-
So I created this blog so I can easily update you with my day to day progress in the business and things I learn or experience.
Today I spent several hours studying soil test results.
I was just starting to get into fertilizing and soil testing because I
want to do it right without causing runoff from excessive fertilizing
etc.
I have been getting my soil tests results from Allen’s Seed Store in Exeter but
they are very busy and usually don’t have much time to explain what
should be done. They advise me what fertilizer to put down, but I
never know at which rate, how often, or how much to but down. They
also usually only address N-P-K and PH issues and do not take into
account any of the results as far as the CEC, Ca, Mg, and Na levels.
I have been doing a lot of research online and I am trying to reach
out to get some help in these areas but I am finding it hard to find
any concrete information and as a result am doing a lot of guesswork.
I called the URI Master Gardener line and they had advised me of the soils department that
may be able to guide me in the right direction. He
seemed to think that since I was only dealing with lawns that I was
too focused on the details of the soil test.
Anyhow, in the soil test results I learned alot about CEC and that the lower the number the more sandy the soil. The optimal range is 10-15 and you can up this number by ammending it with organic matter such as compost. I may try this on one lawn in the near future.
On my site Starting a lawn mowing business I will soon add more information about soil test results and how to interpret them along with new ideas about fertilizing lawns.