Storage Buildings For Lawn and Landscape Businesses

Keeping your tools safe and protected from the weather is important for every trade, and particularly for those businesses that use a lot of expensive equipment. If you are involved in lawn care, or landscaping, you know how important it is to keep your mowing, edging, and trimming equipment in good condition and out of the weather. Equipment that is not well stored, loses value more quickly and repair or replacement is costly, both in terms of money spent, and down time. Your equipment keeps your business running, and keeping it running is a high priority!  Proper equipment maintenance is important, and requires a proper place to perform.

Storage for lawn and landscape materials is also important. Having fertilizers, mulch, soil amendments, plants, and seed available at the right time, can boost your sales, and the speed at which you operate. Storage space is very important in the lawn and landscape industry, but how and where do you get it?

We have a suggestion. Your local portable utility building company has buildings in many shapes and sizes, and with a wide variety of amenities and options such as ramps, roll up doors, vents, windows, and insulation which can help you to get exactly what you need for your growing business.

For more information on Storage Buildings see: Storage Building Blog

The Best Lawn May Be Less Lawn

If the lawn care blues are getting you down, you might consider this idea from the “green” community: To be more green, have less green! By less green, we mean less turf covered area. Turf grasses are pretty efficient at cycling water and nutrients if they are fed and watered properly, and they do a good job of providing clean oxygen, but most of them are not native to our area, no, not even Bermuda grass, and they require more nutrients, and more water than other types of plants in order to maintain that lush green color we all love! They also require an inordinate amount of pesticides compared to trees, shrubs, and ground covers.

Planting native trees and shrubs can be a nice alternative, and offer a little relief for your pocketbook in these tough times. There are even some pest control benefits if you plant the right combination. If birds are attracted to your yard, they will handle a lot of your pest control for you!

Every year your lawn creates about a hundred pounds of nitrogen per acre. That is over two pounds of nitrogen per one thousand square feet, which is about two fertilizer applications per year.
It is estimated by many experts, that up to 60 percent of the fertilizer applied to your lawn is removed by removing the clippings.
When you bag, you are removing a significant amount of organic matter from your lawn.
The money saved can be substantial if you have a large lawn.
Now, there is work involved, if you wait too long between cuttings, the grass could grow so much that the cuttings do not break down quickly, but I know, if you are reading this, that you are interested in creating a healthy lawn, and would never allow that to happen. Mowing frequency is a big part of good lawn care, and on most of our grasses, the more frequently you mow, the better the quality of your lawn. This helps in a couple of ways:

It makes the clippings easier for nature to break down into nitrogen.
It causes the grass to grow laterally, thus getting thicker, and filling in the empty spaces, or as we say, it “tightens the turf”. This makes your lawn more wear tolerant.
I hope you will give this consideration when the time to begin mowing arrives. It is the most ecological, economical and aesthetic way to a better lawn!

When you start planning out your routine for lawn garden and landscape maintenance, give a little thought to the single most effective thing that you can do to improve your lawn. Increasing mowing frequency will help your lawn in ways you might not have thought about.

Here are 10 great reasons you should:

1. The more often you mow, the “tighter” your lawn will become, because the grass will start to grow laterally rather than upward.

2. Mowing more frequently will allow you to lower your mowing height, providing less cover for insects, and less cover means fewer bugs.

3. As a result of the tightening of the turf, it will be more durable as well. Mowing heavily trafficked areas more frequently can help to prevent those ugly bald spots in your lawn.

4. Since there is less leaf blade to transpire water, the lawn will need less water, and irrigation can become less frequent.

5. Less frequent irrigation will help to keep fungus from becoming a problem.

6. The clippings you have will be smaller, and will degrade more quickly, putting more nitrogen and organic matter back into the soil, so less fertilizer is needed to keep the lawn green.

7. Thatch will be less of a problem.

8. The need for bagging will disappear.

9. It will help your lawn to be more healthy, and healthy lawns ward off lawn disease and fungus, can withstand more traffic, and suffer less from insect damage, recovering more quickly when these problems do occur.

10.You will have fewer weed problems, because they can’t go to seed between mowing’s, and because the weeds will be competing with a healthy opponent.

Let’s recap.
Mowing more frequently saves money on fertilizer and irrigation, makes your lawn stronger, tighter, and more bug, weed, disease and fungus resistant.

There is another benefit of more frequent mowing. It provide exercise. If you want to tone up, or work off some extra weight, why not double the benefit? So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and mow, mow, mow!