|
Internet Search Tips
If you are looking for more information on the Green Industry and the landscaping and gardening business ProGardenBiz has over 40 feature articles, columns, news, and tips in each issue. Previous articles and information can be found in the Archives.
For additional information you can use a good search site such as Google or All-the-Web. When doing a search use terms that define your interest.
Typical search terms for the Green Industry are:
landscape contractor
landscaper
landscaping
landscape maintenance
garden
gardener
irrigation
sprinklers
waterscape
ponds
lawn
lawn care
lawns
mowing
grounds maintenance
interiorscape
nursery
Green Industry
lawn care tips
it works for me
Use two or three words that best describe your search such as:
start garden business
You can add or delete words to refine your search if the results are not successful.
ProGardenBiz is here to help answer your questions. We welcome your questions. Email us at: editor
@progardenbiz.com.
|
Green Industry Templates & Forms for the Lawn Care Business
|
|
|
|
Volume 1 Issue 3
|
|
Department
|
|
 |
It Works for Me...
Lawn Care Tips, Tricks, & Ideas
|
|
|
|
|
|
ProGardenBiz Lawn Care & Garden Magazine for the Green Industry
"It Works for Me" will provide you an opportunity to share your lawn care ideas and methods that you have found to be helpful in your day to day landscape operation. We even want to know about ideas that have failed or proven disastrous so that other people might avoid making the same error. Send us an email describing your idea, what you did, how it was done, if it saved you money, whose idea it was, how long it took and so on. Send any photos or drawings (jpg or gif files) as well.
Send us an email. Please include your name and address. We reserve the right to edit letters.
eMail: editor@progardenbiz.com
ProGardenBiz has not tested and does not guarantee or endorse these ideas.
Lawn Care Tricks with Food Coloring...
We use to use the special additives for spray marking when we sprayed for weeds. It became too expensive so we started to use food coloring. It works great and it doesn't stain as bad as some of the commercially available products.
P.E.
Tucson, AZ
Have a problem with people cutting through shrub areas and cutting corners? Try a few well placed rocks, or try lining the "path" with lots of different size rocks. Have a problem with people taking short cuts down a small slope face? Get a 4' by 8' wire sheet with a minimum of 6" by 6" spacings. Cut it to fit the path. Place several 2" by 2" stakes about 18" apart. Make sure that the stakes stick up level with the top of the ground cover you have. Nail the  wire sheet to the stakes. You can also plant thorny vines through the wire. If that doesn't work try land mines.
K.W.
El Cajon, CA
For solving path problems, I always liked the innovative design solution used by a forward thinking landscape designer. The landscaping was being installed in a shopping center with typical islands in the parking area. The designer made a general plan, but requested that the contractor doing the install only put in the irrigation system and the top soil graded to final grade with no plantings. Small signs were put up to explain that the landscaping was still under construction and the shopping center opened for business.
Within a week there were clear paths in use across various areas of the landscaping where people decided to take "shortcuts". The designer than finalized the planting plans and incorporated these paths into the plan. The paths were formalized with concrete walks or stepping stones.
The people showed where they wanted to walk and the landscaping conformed. - Editor
Why should I tell other people what works for me in my lawn care business? If I figure something out that does a better job than what everyone else is doing and it gets me more work I'm not going to tell anyone. They can figure it out for themselves. If get an idea its mine!
B.N.
Las Vegas, NV
Be a sport. If you have a technique or a method that is so unique and exclusive, please don't tell anyone. You are right in that instance. The things we want to hear about are the clever ways you tackle everyday problems such as the ideas of above. No sense to being stingy with a few ideas. - Editor
A New Way to Use Round-up
This way I use to control bermuda grass in the grey leaved, yellow flowered trailing gazania has only proven disastrous once. I use Round-Up. I mix it about 3/4 ounce to the gallon. It can take about 3 or 4 tries, but I usually kill the bermuda and not the gazania. It doesn't work on other varieties. Another thing I noticed was that it didn't bloom so much after I sprayed for a few months, but then with some fertilizer it was fine.
J.R.
Phoenix, Arizona
The Case of the Lost Irrigation Zone
Several years ago we took over a large residential apartment complex that was an irrigation man's nightmare. Our biggest problem was locating all the valves (about 200) and determining which of the 20 controllers operated them. After a lot of trudging  about, poking through ground cover and under jungles of shrubs we located all the valves. We realized that trying to remember where all these valves were located would be impossible. We therefore drew simple line drawings on quadrille paper, one drawing for each controller, showing the locations and station numbers of the valves in its area. We then sealed the drawings in plastic. Now each controller has its own map safely locked inside with a grease pencil to make notations of problems.
L.E.
Orange, CA
For more Lawn Care Tips that Work for Me read previous installments of this column in our magazine archives.
Recommended Reading:
|
|
|
