Rain, Rain, Go Away… Customer News and Updates

Remember the spring drought? It ended just two weeks ago and when we said Saint Augustine needed rain so badly, we didn’t mean we needed to make it all up in one week! It was a challenging week to say the least. Now that we are staffed up and ready to run two lawn maintenance crews, mother nature had other ideas. A small fraction of our customers got serviced last week so don’t feel left out or skipped over if we did not get to you. Trust me, we would much rather be keeping your lawn in shape and on schedule than to endure the coming week we are about to have to deal with due to tall and messy grass. The last thing we would want to do is cause more permanent damage to your lawn by trying to cut when the ground is saturated like it has been, and for our Windward Ranch customers…we all live in a prior swamp and pasture.

As we continue to grow and bring new equipment and employees on board, we appreciate your patience while we get personnel trained properly to bring our high standards as well as test different equipment than normal to see what works and what does not. My goal as well as my guys is to provide you with the best looking yards in Saint Augustine. If we ever miss our standards on anything, please let me know so I can address with my team and be sure my crew leaders are delivering our quality. As we spread to two crews, there may be some slight adjustments to service days or times. I will be sending out service reminders this week so everyone is refreshed on your scheduled service day and can clean up any pet waste, etc. before we get there.

Irrigation: Please, please, please be certain your irrigation is defaulted to OFF. It’s already difficult enough to mow grass in Florida summers and not damage your lawns. You cannot count on rain sensors to work and the spring drought is over. If you do not water for the next seven days and there is zero rain, you will still be fine. My general rule of thumb during the summer is after your ground is dry run irrigation after three days of no rain. Two days if it happens to get really dry and hot. You will be surprised how little you will need irrigation through the summer due to our rain patterns. You do need to be certain any trees and shrubs continue to get water and every yard and every zone is different. If you have constant wet areas, you likely need to turn those zones completely off for the summer. Just because you have irrigation does not mean you need to use it and too much water can be just as bad as not enough as you will get fungus, ruts, and torn grass. Irrigation should be considered as a supplement to mother nature when the rain is not happening. Bikini Groundskeeping is now handling irrigation repairs and maintenance if you need system checks or repairs which were exposed during our drought.

Bermuda Owners: buckle up! While Saint Augustine grass owners have panicked throughout the spring because their grass was not coming in as fast and beautiful as Bermuda, you all got to enjoy that emerald green carpet. Now the tides have turned and Saint Augustine grass is finally catching up and Bermuda has hit its point where it grows too fast between services. If you ever wonder why Bermuda looks so beautiful on ball fields or golf courses, its because it gets cut every 2-3 days in the summer. Obviously, in a residential setting, that can’t be duplicated unless you are an extreme hobbyist. Just to educate a little, Bermuda sends all the chlorophyll to the tips of the stalks, so when you cut it, that’s why you get that yellow and brown color. The taller the grass, the longer it takes to send the new chlorophyll to the new tips…which is another reason, Bermuda loves to be short as feasibly possible. So Bermuda is going to be our biggest challenge this week and we will often be having to double cut it due to the thick texture and length from the rain delays. If you don’t read anything further let me just say this. It is not going to be pretty getting back to proper height, so mentally prepare! However, the worst thing you can do is raise the height and have Bermuda that is too tall as most lawn care professionals will do in this area because they don’t know anything about Bermuda or turf grass. That’s when we get the call to take over your Bermuda lawn after it is a hay field due to some other lawn company. The good news is that in just a few days, it should green up again. We have just hit that point of the summer where Bermuda grows to fast for a 7 day mow. Bermuda looks the worst on the day it is cut while Saint Augustine usually looks its best. Two complete different species that have to be treated differently.

Saint Augustine Grass Owners: Congratulations, as I have seen many of you panic and stress from your Saint Augustine not coming in as fast as you expected, most of you have hit that ideal 4″ height and growing 3″ to 4″ per week now. We will be taking alot of grass off the top this week due to the delays and it may not be as clean and crisp as usual, we should be back to normal by next week long as the weather doesn’t completely destroy us again. You may see some yellowing depending on how much is taken off the top and part of that is the lack of sunlight over the past week, which has contributed to our yards not drying out.

Thank you for all the small landscape and cleanup job requests yesterday. The company and especially my employees really appreciate the hours we were able to generate when they were running behind due to the weather. If we did not get to your job yesterday, we have it on our list and will be working on those this week. Should anyone else have additional landscape needs with shrubs, mulch, weeding, etc. feel free to let us know and I can get you a quote or our hourly rates for the job.

Thanks to all of you for your referrals and continued support as we continue in our first full time year in the business. This is now officially my “real job” after cutting free the 20 year ball and chain of the corporate world a couple months ago. Our growth has far excelled our first year goals and expectations and although finding and hiring employees has been the biggest challenge, we are currently staffed up to our current needs and I can start delegating to my crew leaders so I can get to more of your landscape and irrigation needs. Stay tuned for more services from our company including pressure washing starting in the fall, high quality landscape lighting, and we will also be offering Christmas/holiday lighting and decorating again this year. My goal is to keep my guys full time throughout the year, so also consider any major landscape projects you may be considering in the fall and winter if you do not need them completed right away.