As the story of the ant and the grasshopper has taught us, fall is a time to prepare for winter. Any self-respecting gardener will tell you that fall is for planting. A landscaper will tell you that fall is for clean up. And the turf care professional will tell you you've got to care for your lawn now to ensure a beautiful healthy lawn in the spring. All sage advice that, if taken, can offer benefits to the rental equipment company. From the gardener to the professional landscaper, having the right lawn and garden equipment in the rental fleet for fall applications is essential. Is your store prepared?
Fall is for planting
Fall is the perfect time to plant bulbs — daffodils, narcissus, as well as crocus, scillia, chrysanthemums and tulips, just to name a few. And it's also a great time to plant trees and shrubs. The one thing your gardening and landscaping customers will surely need is a tiller. A good tiller will allow for them to dig deep enough for bulb planting — at least six inches deep for larger bulbs and at least three inches for smaller bulbs. A tree or shrub would require a few more inches in depth. To meet all of these needs it would be best for a rental fleet to include tillers that can till up to 10 inches deep.
The size of the tiller needed may vary by the size of the garden, but odds are the fall gardener is not looking to till over their whole yard, probably just a few smaller gardens 20 to 40 square feet, or planting a shrub or tree here and there. A mini or roto-tiller should work just fine for fall gardening customers and will be of value to the professional landscaper as well. A small tiller is helpful because it is lightweight for transport and easier to control the precise depth than the bigger tillers. A rental company should additionally offer a tiller that also cultivates to help users control any weeds that look to hamper their fall foliage.
Fall is for lawn & turf care
Landscaping experts will tell you that there is no more beneficial time to address the health and maintenance of a lawn than fall. Fall maintenance allows lawn and turf time to relax, recuperate and rejuvenate from the draining conditions of summer, and gives the grass the strength to survive the harsh conditions of winter. Through proper feeding, seeding, dethatching and aeration, the turf can rebound beautifully in the spring.
Rental customers, whether they are professional contractors or homeowners, will no doubt look to their rental equipment supplier for aerators, spreaders, dethatchers or turf rakes, and seeders. Versatility can pay off big for rental companies in the turf care segment. Not every customer is going to aerate a football field and not every professional is going to prepare a residential lawn for winter. So how can a rental center have all the lawn and garden equipment necessary for both the professional and the residential user and still have space left on the showroom floor? Dedicated commercial equipment is necessary but sizeable. Rental company owners might want to look to multifunctional equipment or attachments to save space and also offer their smaller area users the right tool for the job. Many mini or roto-tillers offer an assortment of attachments and accessories and rental customers might just be surprised at how effective these little giants of yard and garden care are. If your rental business stocks mini-tillers, take advantage of the attachments they offer — these will come in handy and offer plenty of power for the residential user, and save valuable floor space in the showroom.
Fall is for clean-up
From leaves to hedges, fall is the time to trim, rake, vacuum and bag all of the debris that autumn leaves behind. The No. 1 chore of fall is leaf removal. The No. 1 mistake that homeowners make is allowing for leaves to collect and decompose on their lawn. In actuality they run the risk of smothering their lawn and hindering its growth in spring. The tools of fall clean-up are numerous and depending on a rental location's customer base, the rental company may need to stock all of the following for fall clean-up: commercial hedge trimmers capable of handling the thicker tougher growth of fall; blowers (handheld, backpack and walk-behind); leaf and debris vacuums; and for the commercial contractors, even truck loaders.
Also remember that leaf removal is a multi-million dollar business. From the brown paper bags that line the streets on trash night to the huge loaders that reduce and deliver leaves to municipal compost sites, it's big business to remove and recycle. For rental equipment companies that stock all of the fall lawn and garden equipment, along with eco-friendly containers for leaf and other lawn refuse disposal, the benefits are sure to add to the bottom line at the end of the season.
Linda Beattie is commercial public relations marketing & sales support specialist of Schiller-Pfeiffer, Southampton, Pa.
Fall Lawn Maintenance Tipsfor Your Rental Customers
With the dog days of summer behind us, it's time to take care of the damage the heat, sun and summer fun has caused to homeowners' lawns and get the turf prepared for the harsh conditions of winter. Experts will tell you that the most beneficial time for a lawn is in the fall, and a beautiful lawn is not as hard to achieve as you might think.
There are four necessities to fall lawn care that can work to revive the fall drab and offer a beautiful thick healthy lawn come spring.
Mowing
Continued mowing in the fall is important. Advise homeowners to continue mowing grass until it stops growing. If the lawn is left to grow in the fall that growth will die and cause thatch, which could choke or stump healthy growth in the spring. There is also no need to adjust the height of the mower blades, the homeowner may cut too short and scalp the lawn, causing damage.
Feeding & seeding
For homeowners who have been disappointed in the spring by the lack of color and fullness of their lawn, odds are it was due to improper feeding. Feeding in the fall offers the most visual effect on your lawn come spring. Seeding in the bare spots or thickening existing areas is also best done in the fall as it has the longest time and the least traffic, and can take effect when spring comes around to wake it up.
Dethatching & aerating
Dethatching and aerating are two vital tasks that are a must do for a healthy lawn. Both tasks can be done pretty much any time over the course of the growing season, depending on the traffic of the area and the weather conditions, but are most beneficial when done in the fall.
Homeowners should be advised to dethatch first to remove dead compressed grass that chokes out nutrients and hampers growth. A lawn cannot thrive if it cannot breathe. If dethatching a large area (more than 60 x 60 square feet) consider recommending a dethatcher that has a catcher bag — raking up thatch is a long and cumbersome job.
Aerating can offer lawns two benefits. It alleviates soil compaction, which is more deadly to a lawn than insects, disease and drought. Aeration is the process of putting holes or slits into the lawn to relieve the compaction of the soil and allow beneficial nutrients and water to the root system. The second benefit, (if a core aerator is used) is that the homeowner can leave the cores on top of the lawn. The cores will break down and offer nourishment to the lawn over the winter months.
Leaf removal
A common mistake of fall is to allow leaves to settle and decompose on the grass. By the time the leaves have broken down the grass has smothered and nothing beneficial has gotten to it. It's best to remove the leaves, possibly start a compost pile or see if the local municipality picks up leaves or has a leaf dump.
Fall is a time for preparation. And if there is any truth to the ant and grasshopper story, rental businesses everywhere are about to become very busy places…So don't procrastinate like the grasshopper, make sure your store is prepared with all of the equipment of fall.