landscape maintenance

8 hours!

Eight straight hours of leaf pick-up is nothing unusual for West Coast landscape professionals in mid-November. Some strata sites have many mature trees and they drop a lot of stuff. So, you can expect to have some fun.

Here are five lessons to take away from good West Coast leaf clean-up.

Lesson 1: Tools

Always start with proper tools. When I’m asked to help out on a site, I expect to use proper tools. The rakes should be in good shape. Don’t even ask me to use rakes with many missing tines. Use great tools!

Most companies have budget for new tools. Take advantage of it. It’s borderline insulting asking a certified professional to use sub-standard tools.

Lesson 2: No pyramids

If you expect to rock leaf clean-up, forget pyramids. This goes for blowing and raking. When you blow, don’t overdo it. Blow the leaves into a decent pile and move on.

When raking, the same rule applies. Bring your tarp close and rake the leaves into it. There is no sense creating a perfect pyramid. We need the leaves in a tarp and taken away. Nobody is scoring points for making nice looking pyramids.

With huge piles, put your tarp right into them and rake or kick the leaves in. Easy. And always rake with purpose. I expect to see rosy cheeks!

Lesson 3: Tarp slavery

Lugging heavy tarps on your shoulders should only be done if you’re close to your truck because it’s the least efficient method. You can avoid tarp slavery by using a wheelbarrow or bringing your truck closer.

Note that some workers will happily walk down the block with one tarp over their shoulder just have a little break. To rock fall leaf clean-up, you must break this habit. Send them away with a full wheelbarrow if there is no truck access.

Lesson 4: Look up!

Since you’re not responsible for removing one hundred percent of the leaves on every visit, relax and do your best. Before you start stressing, look up! Is the tree above done dropping leaves or not? If not, don’t stress about every leaf on the ground. Wait until all of the leaves are down before doing a thorough clean-up.

Lesson 5: Enjoy fall!

Enjoy the fall.

This should be easy but it’s not. I often see people standing under trees blasting away at their crowns with leaf blowers. Why the rush? Enjoy the fall and its many colors.

If you struggle with this, think of the miracle that occurs inside the leaves you detest so much. Photosynthesis is a miracle that keeps all people alive and it happens inside leaves. The leaves are actually beautiful mini-factories; and they entertain us with their colors.

What’s pre-blowing?

The idea behind pre-blowing is saving man-hours on labor. Imagine you have leaf debris on your site or in your garden and you contemplate raking it up. It can be done easily in your garden; and being outside in fresh air is good for you, especially now, during a pandemic.

But on a larger scale, you can avoid a lot of extra raking by blowing your leafy debris onto your lawns before mowing. Just do it quickly. Remember, this isn’t your end of the day, thorough, clean up blow. All you have to do is push the bulk of your leafiness onto your lawns so it can mowed up.

Don’t crush your mower

Pre-blowing is effective from late summer and into early fall. That’s when the leaf drop is noticeable but it doesn’t require pile making. The idea, again, is to quickly push leafy debris onto your lawns and mow it up so you don’t have to rake.

Making and picking up piles is time consuming so it will delay your mowing. Pre-blows are meant to be quick jobs.

When the amount of leafy debris is significant, give up on pre-blowing. You can destroy your mower by forcing it to mulch massive amounts of leaves. It’s bad for the engine.

Commercial site example

Let’s consider one of my commercial sites as an example. When I pulled up on site one late summer Saturday morning, there was enough debris on site to justify a pre-blow.

I blew off the parking lot and beds full of Rhododendron leaves. Then I mowed it all up. Remember to slow down to give the mower time to shred the debris.

At the end of my service I only did a quick clean-up blow. I didn’t do any raking thanks to my pre-blow. And blowing is easier than raking.

Give pre-blowing a try!

Basic mistakes

Landscape maintenance professionals are developed, not created overnight. It takes constant training and monitoring to make new workers into skilled machines.

Of course, without clear directions, mistakes will happen; they will happen even with clear directions. Once you’ve identified the mistakes, review them with your workers and pray they don’t repeat them.

In a recent blog post I covered poor blowing practices. Here we’ll take a look at two blowing mistakes that came to my attention recently.

Choked drains

This is a picture from the United States. The contractor’s new hire was asked to blow and he made a big pile of debris. But, instead of picking it up, he tried to make it disappear down a drain. That’s not a good plan.

While there’s some logic to it, like less labour and zero green waste to dump, this sort of work later leads to flooding in most places. I know, for example, that the City of Vancouver (British Columbia, Canada) hands out fines for this kind of work. As soon as the rains come, the streets flood and upset residents call the city to fix it.

There are no short-cuts here; you must blow the debris into a pile and remove it. It’s that easy. This was a good learning experience for a new employee.

Lawn or sidewalk?

What do you with your piles? Here we had a veteran part-time employee and he left the pile in the middle of the sidewalk. So, afterwards I gently reminded him that debris piles left on lawns are easier to pick up and don’t require additional blowing.

Always pick your words carefully, because veteran part-timers appreciate corrections less. But make the corrections immediately. Remember, foremen and supervisors have to act fairly but firmly!

The other problem is sidewalk access. As soon as you make a pile like this, the only wheelchair user in the complex emerges and you’ll be lucky if you don’t get the one-finger salute. I did see an elderly dog owner with a bad hip crossing the lawn.

Pro tips

When you’re doing a clean-up blow, always blow debris into piles and pick them up. Debris doesn’t belong in drains or on the street.

Blowing your piles onto lawns makes pick-up easier, doesn’t require re-blow and it doesn’t create sidewalk obstruction.

Train your workers well! And homeowners should adopt the same strategies.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I preach about great clean-ups in landscape maintenance all the time. When I prune, I want the clean-up to match the pruning. No excuses, just great pruning and clean-up. Period.

Cedar hedges

On the West Coast we prune cedar hedges (Thuja plicata and T. occidentalis) from early fall until late winter. It gives us work to do in the slower part of the year and it’s better for the hedges because it’s cooler.

But the power shearing generates a lot of clippings and makes the clean-ups extremely annoying. This is because the clippings get stuck everywhere, including in the hedges.

Cones

Cedar cones are especially difficult because you have to use a ladder for the job. This makes it awkward to dislodge any larger clippings from the tree. Just switching from power shears to a rake is time consuming; and using a rake messes up the look of the cedar.

Smaller rectangular cedar hedges are easier in that we can brush off the debris from the tops before finishing the job. Large cones are tricky.

Secondary drop

The debris at the base of this cedar looks terrible. It would make any normal landscape foreman freak out and haul his workers back in to re-do it. But not so fast; I took this this photo weeks later. So, we’re seeing the dreaded “secondary drop“.

Secondary drop refers to debris that falls down after the initial pruning and clean-up. It comes with the job so there’s no need to freak out. We have to accept that some debris will fall off the cedars later. We can’t help it.

Pro tip: I know that some people will disagree with me but I am convinced that the bottoms of cedar hedges should be kept shaggier. This is to protect the roots from intense summer sunlight. In the wild, Thuja plicata trees are starting to suffer from more intense summer heat waves.

When you prune cedars, clean-up the clippings as best as you can knowing full well that there will be some secondary drop for you to clean-up later.