About the Landscape Juice Network

Founded in 2008. The Landscape Juice Network (LJN) is the largest and fastest growing professional landscaping and horticultural association in the United Kingdom.

LJN's professional business forum is unrivalled and open to anyone within within the UK landscape industry

LJN's Business Objectives Group (BOG) is for any Pro serious about building their business.

For the researching visitor there's a wealth of landscaping ideas, garden design ideas, lawn advice tips and advice about garden maintenance.

Replies

  • Here in Surrey, I have just gone over to fortnightly cuts, for my weekly clients. One of the Bi-weekly clients I normally take half a tonne bag of grass away, Thursday I gave it the lowest cut I ever have & not even half a bag away. The grass is full of weeds as the client is moving soon & wouldn't pay for treatments.so the only way to tidy it is a lower cut, which I wouldn't normally do this time of year.

    We have had showers on & off this week, but only enough to dampen the ground & not penetrate. I started de-turfing for a new bed yesterday in another client's & it was like peeling a layer of concrete off. Now I have to turn it over as well. Guess what, it's on Clay!

    This all comes on top of an extremely dry spring, I thnk if it keeps up we will be heading for hose pipe bans, after all, Summer has only just started.

    • Cheers Neil. Yes, certainly very different to last summer.

  • It's just the time of year, grasses have gone into reproductive mode and are dedicating more energy to trying to make seeds and seed-carrying stems, rather than nice leaves! 

  • PRO

    I'm cutting my clients every 2 weeks. It's not good to cut it when it's very warm so I tend to raise my mowers a tad and basically it's a clip hoover and put the stripes back in. Even when the grass is brown and short putting the stripes back in makes it look nice. Much prefered last years weather with all the rain, the lawns were green all year and it gives you plenty to do. 3 years ago when we had the drought I had to bring some of my winter jobs forward as nothing was growing. Much prefer to be busy. 

    • Agreed Wayne, cheers.

      • PRO

        Cheshire here - mostly cutting on a fortnightly basis, but an increasing number of clients don't have enough growth to warrant cutting - nice having a rest, not so nice for the bank account !!!!

        • Yeah, that was my angle really Mark.  We know that they still look better for a cut; most customers are still alright with me mulching a cm off, but others (understandably) getting a bit trigger happy on whether its done or not. 

          My response is that 'if we miss one today and it rains next time, we're suddenly staring down the barrel of 6 wks'

          I guess that, over time, it's best to engineer a diary full of lawns that you're either feeding, or grow more consistently.

          Not keen to go the route of contracts and a minimum amount of cuts etc, as many of my clients are elderly; they're just not going to understand me being there more often in May than July.  They have their set day once a fortnight and know when I'm coming.

  • raining here today (East mids) but a heat wave is threatened from next Friday onwards, 25 degrees C every day until mid July, maybe longer

  • There is nothing I like better than the kind of prolonged dry weather and lack of rain that slows the grass right down. Perfect.

    I like it when I can mow quickly and efficiently due to dry conditions.

    Much better than a hot and very wet May/June when the grass is always at least six inches long after a fortnight.

    The PCCs are 11 cuts per year and one other contract is 12 cuts. So a lack of growth for a while helps to spread the cuts out now, thus narrowing the spacing’s of later cuts when the grass is growing faster. This helps a great deal. A very late cut in mid/late November is then easily incorporated in order to leave it neat over winter.

    I have a very large contract which is ‘price per year’, so even if I only have to mow very sporadically, I still get the same fee. I might well save one cut this year over all.

    Being asked to miss cuts on the normal fortnightly visits is very unlikely to occur.

    Clients understand that when the grass is very vigorous I will do the extra work and put in the extra time to mow perfectly. When it then becomes much easier and faster to mow, they ‘get’ that it balances out. We both have to play our parts in this contract. We accommodate each other.

    It’s worth noting that we are not in drought conditions. It is dry and the grass is on the back foot, but it is nowhere like it was in 2018 – not yet at least.

    Even in these current dry conditions, there is always some growth and long ends, so a quick once over is still desirable to keep things tidy. On the work where there is always hedge/shrub cutting at each visit [one is weekly], I can decide whether to mow or spend more time on the other jobs. Often strimming can be left for longer periods and other more pressing or neglected jobs can be done instead. So to me, these long spells of dry weather are always to be welcomed. It is something I wish for every season.

    • Thanks Vic, great post.  I saw on another thread you've been at it since the 80's - congrats on a long career.  

This reply was deleted.

LJN Sponsor

Advertising

PRO

How Do You Qualify A Sales Lead?


I don't know about you, but our phones and emails are starting to get busy with enquiries. I've learned over the years that it's all too easy to answer the phone, arrange a consultation and then spend a couple of hours with a prospective client…

Read more…
Comments: 0