Category

landscape maintenance

Mar 08
0

How landscapers stay busy on cold winter days

By | gardening, landscape maintenance | No Comments

There’s always work

If you live in a strata building and look outside at your landscapers with suspicion, fear not. They’re busy even though it’s cold outside. Let’s see what they’re doing.

Garbage

There’s no point making a site look beautiful when there is a pile of garbage on the lawn. You might as well pick it up, otherwise it will detract from your overall maintenance presentation. This will also take the pressure off your building caretaker.

Deep-edging

Assuming your edges aren’t frozen solid, you can re-establish your deep edges with an edging shovel which is flat on the bottom. Make sure the edges are sharp ninety degrees and remove any dislodged grass chunks.

Edging gives our beds nice definition, it will help guide our lawn care edger machines, and it’s best done now in winter when we’re not busy cutting grass.

Dead out

Now is a great time to snip out dead foliage out of our plants. Often people are too busy during the season to stop and deal with this. Not deep into January: I snipped out dead branches from trees, dead out of Salal and evergreens. We should aim for beautiful, healthy landscapes. Dead foliage looks awful so snip it out.

Salal

Add soil

If there’s budget, adding soil amender to tired, depleted beds, is also a great winter time task. The warm soil might even warm you up. New soil looks great immediately and you won’t have to weed for months. The plants also appreciate the new soil.

My commercial site in Coquitlam.

Note the Miscanthus sinensis ornamental grass. Since it’s still beautiful and upright, I’m leaving the cutback closer to spring. It’s important to cut it back before new foliage starts to emerge in spring. But for now, enjoy it.

This bed usually requires cultivation but now, with new soil installed, I shouldn’t have to touch it too much.

Conclusion

Yes, the winter is a slow season but we still have work to do. We can add new soil to tired, depleted beds, snip out dead foliage from trees and shrubs, prune roses and deep edge our beds. And don’t skip garbage picking.

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Feb 08
0

So help me Vas: two adjustments you can make to your strata maintenance work

By | landscape maintenance, Lawn Care | No Comments

Adjustments

I love filling in on strata sites when the regular foreman is missing. Sometimes they’re on vacation, sick, ill with COVID, or laid off by choice. Whatever the case, it’s fun to examine their sites and look for adjustments that can be made when the new season hits. 2023 here we go.

Mow lines

What’s wrong with this picture?

What’s wrong with this picture?

Obviously, the lawn care dudes mow like robots so now we see clear dips in the lawn where the mower wheels run. Every single time! Now that the grass isn’t growing in January, it’s especially noticeable. And I’m not a fan. I prefer seeing a uniform green lawn without any dips that could potentially injure my ankles or swallow small pets.

I would correct this problem by instructing the crew to alternate the starting lines of their mowers. For example, start mowing a bit farther away from the sidewalk edge and the wall. Yes, you will have to line trim a little bit more grass but it’s worth it.

Don’t mow like robots.

Curbs

Whatever you do inside the complex, this curb will always detract from your work presentation. I know that some of you will disagree, telling me that the city is responsible for curb maintenance. And technically speaking you’re right. However, nobody knows when the city sweeper is coming. Can he handle curbs caked this badly in soggy, decomposing leaves? And are you sure that all of the parked cars will obey your signs and move away from the curb?

Landscapers are definitely responsible for keeping drains open. Since I know this, I blew away the curb edge to let the water flow away.

I would correct this problem by blowing the curb edges as soon as leaves start to fall. Early on the leaves are still dry and fluffy. Blow them onto lawns before you mow or, make small piles and rake them up.

If it’s windy, then you can discreetly blow the leaves into the neighboring municipal park or directly across the street to your competition. Of course, this could start a war so be careful. Conversely, if your curbs are caked in leaves and your competition is super clean across the street, you know you’re getting abused.

Conclusion

Your strata complexes will look better in winter if you take good care of your curbs and mow correctly all year. Avoid heavy leaf accumulations in curb edges; and don’t mow your lawns like a robot. Alternate your starting mow lines to avoid creating huge dips in the lawns with your mower wheels.

What other adjustments can you think of?

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Jun 08
0

How trees love me back

By | landscape maintenance, Trees | No Comments

Tree hugger’s good karma

I love trees, and recently I found out that they love me back. Let me explain. When a new residential client contacted me, she specifically mentioned blowing her driveway clean every 2-3 weeks. This didn’t completely make sense until I met her.

Since the lady runs a mobile detailing service and does a lot of work in her driveway, she wants to have it nice and clean. Now, if you stand in her driveway and look up you’ll see giant Douglas fir branches coming over from the neighbouring lot.

Douglas firs (Pseudotsuga menziesii) are native trees in British Columbia and they’re easy to identify because their cones have unique bracts. Many specimens on Vancouver Island are very old. Harvey Rustad’s book “Big lonely Doug” is about a Douglas fir 66m tall and about 1,000 years old. I highly recommend this book.

Pseudotsuga menziesii

Needles!

Douglas firs drop a lot of needles and branches all the time. Incidentally, you will never catch me calling trees “messy”. Trees do what they do.

What this means is that the lady will need my help all year; and thanks to this tree species’ habit of dropping needles and shedding branches, I will make some spare cash all year. It’s like a constant side-hustle money machine. No, it won’t make me rich but my work does solve someone’s problem. And the lady is really nice. She’s a true client because she’s not afraid to listen to my suggestions and act on them.

Customers only care about price and will drop you for Tom, who is $1 cheaper.

When I drove home that day, I was convinced trees loved me back. Who knew trees could drive a side-hustle operation without getting cut down and turned into toilet paper?

Here we also see one of the benefits of doing side-gigs. You learn new things and meet interesting new clients. It isn’t always about money.

Take care of your trees and who knows, one day they might show you their love!

Apr 27
0

Scanning for late winter details

By | landscape maintenance, Seasonal | No Comments

Scanning your sites

Whenever I’m sent to a site after several months, I like to take a walk around and catalog any blemishes I see. This is especially easy to do in late winter when it’s already nice out but lawn care hasn’t started yet. I did this recently and this blog post will show you some of the details I found.

Broken branches

I detest having broken branches on shrubs or trees. It can invite disease into the plants, and it looks awful. One broken Witch hazel (Hamamelis x intermedia) branch was right in the middle of a high-profile corridor between two buildings.

Since the cut was too large for my hand snips, I waited until I was able to retrieve a hand saw from the my car. I could have tried it with my hand snips, but blowing my wrist is a bad idea. It wasn’t an emergency; safety first.

Groundcover in check

Groundcover plants do what they’re supposed to: they cover the ground so weeds don’t move in. Left untouched, some groundcovers grow out of bounce. That’s what happened with Rubus climbing into Rhododendrons.

Rubus climbing into a Rhodendron
Much better!

It took only a few minutes and it looks better. The Rubus is cut back down to its grouncover function and the Rhododendron is left unmolested.

Missing ivy

This third example makes me mad because it could have been prevented. Last year, someone made the strange decision to remove ivy (Hedera helix) from this power box. I wrongly assumed that something else would replace the ivy.

That’s why I shook my head last week when I had to weed the now bare ground. I knew it would come to this: nature hates bare spots. Weeds move in and have a great time with plenty of sunlight reaching them. It wasn’t that easy for them when ivy still covered the ground. Groundcover plants cover ground; they look good and they prevent unwanted plants from moving in.

The power box looked much better surrounded by ivy. Only remove it if you have a good plan for the spot. Bare ground is the worst option.

You can see weeds creeping in.
Cultivated by Vas but ivy did the job well before.

Late winter details

Late winter is a great time to scan your gardens for blemishes like the three mentioned above. It’s already nice out but lawn care hasn’t started yet. So, take the time to identify and eliminate little blemishes from your gardens.

Apr 23
0

Sarcococca condemned by caretaker

By | landscape maintenance | No Comments

Weird requests

I’m used to being dragged away from my regular landscape duties by caretakers, but sometimes it’s hard to swallow the weird requests they assault me with. Take last week, as an example. It was late in our shift and we were barely thirty minutes away from calling it a day.

Then, out he came, caretaker on a mission, sneezing and looking like he had Omicron. Now, he’s a great guy and a huge ally. But I couldn’t believe what he was asking me to do.

Annihilation

The poor caretaker was suffering from terrible allergies. Allegedly he had trouble breathing at night, his eyes watered and his nose was runny, like a pre-schooler’s. So of course, right away I thought that taking a COVID rapid test would have been a great idea but I’m not a doctor.

To avoid stuffing his body with pills and adding to Big Pharma’s profits, he needed me to level a patch of Sarcococca growing under his windows. The evergreen shrub flowers now, in February, and produces a sweet fragrance, especially when mass-planted.

Now, I had never before heard of anyone suffering allergic reactions from Sarcococcas. It’s plausible, I guess, but weird. And so was his request.

I did hear from a Facebook friend who claims to suffer nasty headaches from the fragrance.

So, out came my power shears. And before I annihilated the plants, the caretaker reminded me to watch out for the sprinkler heads. Last year, all of them got slashed.

The only trick was to hand snip the plants from all of the wall edges and from around the irrigation sprinklers. Then we raked up most of the mutilated plant material and went home. I promised myself I would blog about this. Perhaps there are other caretakers like this.

When Sarcococca goes missing

It looks like hell but, luckily, it’s a very low profile corner. Long term, it should be changed over, assuming there is budget.

Like COVID, weird requests aren’t going away anytime soon. I have to learn to live with them and decline the ones that are clearly over-the-top.

Mar 12
0

Delegate, don’t micro-manage

By | landscape maintenance, Training | No Comments

Easy delegation

Delegation can be super easy, if you do it right. In this blog post I obviously use a landscaping example, but it applies to other industries as well. The key is avoiding micro-management. But first, let’s consider my situation.

I had an open, leafy field and planted beds with a high-profile walkway running through it. Now, with the snow gone, it looked awful. It needed a quick blow but I had other, more pressing tasks to attend to. Backpack leaf blowing doesn’t have to be done by managers. We can easily delegate tasks like this.

The helper

Since I didn’t ask my helper for permission to talk about him, I will have to disguise it a little bit. If you read this, and think it’s about you, you’re mistaken. It’s just coincidence.

So, my helper isn’t a star on staff. He does his job at barely acceptable speeds, doesn’t stress and therefore, rarely looks like he’s out of breath. Think of him as a reliable drone. He shows up on time and does his job.

Knowing all this, I walked him over to my leafy park section and went over his task. Since the leaf pick-up afterwards would be up to him, we brought a tarp and a rake. Walking back and forth is inefficient so don’t do it.

I explained what I needed him to do: blow the entire area and make one or two piles for pick up. I also showed him the boundaries to avoid blowing neighbourhoods we don’t maintain.

Then, I let it go and walked away.

Don’t micro-manage

Avoid micro-management at all costs. Standing there and pointing to every leaf he missed wouldn’t make sense. Good or bad, the worker needs to do his work and learn from the feedback he gets. My worker isn’t a new landscaper; he has experience. But, sometimes, he gets treated like a new guy.

And to provide feedback, I had to go back later to check his work. And I’m happy to report, it was totally fine. Which is what I told him. The park was blown clean and the tarp was full of leaves, ready for pick-up by the road. Case closed.

All done!

Conclusion

Don’t be afraid to delegate tasks to others. When I show up on sites to help my foremen, they’re never shy about delegating the worst tasks to their manager.

Explain the task, show them the area, give them time parameters and walk away. Let it go. Trust them to do their job. If they mess it up, they will learn from it. If they do it well, they will appreciate the autonomy and extra fun. That’s why we have to give feedback.

Micro-management would just suck the life out of their work day. Avoid it.

Debris tarped up and positioned by the road for easy pick-up.
Jan 08
0

Bittersweet max leaf drop

By | landscape maintenance, machines, Seasonal | No Comments

Bittersweet

The first time I noticed the word bittersweet used in reference to trees was in Japan. There, the famous cherry blossoms make people delirious; some follow the blossoms from south to north, like junkies craving their next fix.

Why bittersweet? Because like life, the cherry blossoms are beautiful but they don’t last long. Cheery blossoms in Japan are a must-see item for your live it bucket list. Especially if you go to ancient Kyoto in spring.

Leafiness

When it comes to fall leaf clean-up, bittersweet refers to that moment when you get maximum leaf drop and you know you are about to suffer for one more day. It’s also one of those moments when hearing about attempts to ban leaf blowers seems like a cruel joke.

This past fall has been the most difficult of my twenty-plus landscaping career. It rained heavily for months; it was so bad, I don’t even remember blowing any dry leaves. I would call it a suffer-fest.

All at once

When the weather network announced high winds for one of our fall weekends, some of my co-workers lit up the company WhatsApp, excited about all of the leaves falling in one weekend. And they did! Except, it also rained and the resulting Monday morning mess almost broke us.

I had two helpers for mountains of soggy leaves and it was hard. We cleaned-up leaves from 8-6pm and, because my son had soccer practice at 7, I had to leave at 6. Soccer or no, I would have left anyway.

Soggy Katsura leaves covering the entire site after a storm.

Grinding

Knowing that this was our last big day was little consolation. And we used Stihl’s bad boy 800 model leaf blowers which have high air volume and air pressure. They blow away insects and garden gnomes like nothing but on this day, they too struggled.

And right here is the key point: current battery-operated technology isn’t good enough to handle this kind of leafy mess. It would have taken hours longer and I don’t even know how many battery packs we would have gone through.

The National Association of Landscape Professionals recently made this point to the State of California, which is considering a full ban on gas-powered small engines.

Nasty fall

Leaf clean-up on strata properties is hard work and when the weather turns bad, it can get even harder. For now we use gas-powered leaf blowers because they can handle the load. Once the battery operated technology improves, I will be the first one to test it in the field.

As I write, Christmas is one week away and I’m looking forward to some much-needed down time. It was a long, strange year. When this blog post is published in February, 2022, we’ll be closer to spring. Spring! I can’t wait.

Jan 02
0

The final blow in landscape maintenance

By | landscape maintenance | No Comments

First a missed tarp

Before we discuss the importance of the final blow in landscape maintenance, we should mention the case of a lonely tarp. One full tarp got left behind and it was left right over top of a drain. Now, normally that wouldn’t be a big deal but at the time, the province of British Columbia was dealing with historic floods and people were on edge.

Leaving a big, fat tarp over top of a drain didn’t help anyone. And since I happened to be nearby, I stopped by and loaded it into the back of my Mazda 3. Just barely.

The final blow

The final blow is landscape maintenance is super important. It’s what we refer to as “courtesy blow”. It’s a clean-up blow at the end of the day; and when it’s done right, you shouldn’t even notice that the landscapers were on site.

Yes, the final blow is noisy but it’s a critical step. When the final blow is done correctly, it’s practically impossible to leave a full tarp behind. Yes, sometimes empty tarps get stuffed into hard to spot spaces but it’s hard to miss full tarps. Assuming you blow the entire site religiously.

The final check

Goal number is site cleanliness. Every time. But there is more. Since it’s not always feasible for a foreman to walk her entire site, the final blow doubles as the final check.

Did you see any piles that were missed? What about full tarps blocking drains? Did you see any tools left behind? Are all gates closed? Did you make all remnant piles disappear? (See my blog post on remnant piles on December 14)

Training

While strata residents only hear the noise of our final blow, I think about the workers doing it and wonder how seriously they’re taking it. Check and blow every corner of the site, unless there wasn’t any work done in a section.

It’s surprisingly difficult to get people switched on. They blow like drones, only thinking about messy spots while ignoring everything else. So keep on training them. That’s the key.

Yes, mistakes will happen. I’m quite confident I will one day soon be called in again to collect a lonely tarp left behind by a crew. But with good training, this problem can be minimized.

The final blow is the final check. Don’t take it lightly.

Mar 29
0

Winter brush cutting

By | landscape maintenance | No Comments

Ready for some labor?

This isn’t the first time I’m mentioning brush cutting in winter. It’s a perfect cold-weather task and it shows how labor-heavy landscaping can be. We might as well say it: landscapers get sweaty. If generating sweat spooks you, I would suggest a less-strenuous career path.

The day we went out brush cutting, it was nice and sunny and the goal was to level masses of prickly bramble. It’s done once a year and it’s nice to put in a full day’s work in winter.

Safety first!

The brush-cutting task itself is fairly easy. All you need is some mixed fuel (gas and oil) and protective gear. Do not skip this part. Gloves, steel-toe boots, goggles and a helmet system with face shield and ear protection are all standard equipment. Leave your shorts at home. Don’t take any chances.

Since you’re working in a wild zone, take a good look around. I spotted rebar sticking out of the ground before I even started. Sadly, the rebar ran all the way along, with gaps in-between, so I had to look out for it all day. Next year I will try to remove it or at least bend it. As it is right now, one slip could really mess you up. See the picture below.

Always identify hazards in the landscape.

Depending on how low you brush cut, you can expect rocks and wood to fly out. For this reason the three of us separated; and later, when got close to passersby, we paused to let them go. Safety first! Never play around.

The rest of the day was fairly monotonous. We leveled prickly bramble all day and managed to finish the entire wild bank. Given the size of the bank, bramble removal isn’t practical. We just left the shredded canes on the ground. We’ll be back in twelve months to do it again, unless the boss delegates this task to someone else. But, considering the physical nature and safety aspect of this project, this isn’t a good gig for new employees.

What I hope you take away from this blog post is the physical nature of landscaping work, the occasional monotony and the importance of safety.

When we reassembled at the back of the truck, it was clear the dudes were happy to get the bank done. They worked hard brush cutting on a winter day when not too much else could be done on site.

All done!

Feb 28
0

Training success!

By | landscape maintenance, Training | No Comments

Loving success

I train landscapers all year. Mostly in the field and sometimes through technical posts on the company’s WhatsApp. Some people absorb my brilliant wisdom like sponges, some are indifferent and, a few, couldn’t care less.

So, it makes me happy when I see workers doing well in the field without having to ask or remind them. I think it’s important to celebrate these small wins. Let’s take a look.

Fixed pin oak

Broken branches on trees look awful and, if left unattended, they can invite disease into the tree. So, it’s important to identify broken branches on site or in your garden, and remove them with a sharp saw.

On site I had a newly promoted foreman searching for a handsaw so I inquired about what he was doing. A broken branch in a pin oak (Quercus palustris) on the boulevard, was the answer. I nodded and smiled. Finally, my training was paying off.

For, usually, workers just worry about their lawn care tasks. They don’t worry about other details so it’s nice to see this in the field.

Ornamental grasses

When it comes to ornamental grasses, some people disagree with me on the timing of cutback. I believe most ornamental grasses should be left alone until spring; and cut back before new growth happens.

But, in practice, tall ornamental grasses get beat up by rains and snow and therefore lose their shape. This gets some people upset and they immediately flush cut their grasses.

Many ornamental grass species mature and flower in the fall so it’s a good idea to leave them alone. You can easily do this at home in your garden but at strata complexes it’s up to the site foreman to make the call.

Now, imagine my surprise, when I drove up to one of our strata sites on what would be a sunny day, and saw ornamental grasses still standing. And glorious! I was beaming and congratulated the young foreman for his patience. Spring is coming.

Looking great in early February, 2021.

At other sites all you see is a profusion of small mounds where ornamental grasses used to be. I find it a bit depressing. Even Pennisetum alopecuroides look fine in the snow.