Mistakes will always happen in landscape maintenance, no matter how much training and guidance you give. It’s the same in your regular life. You hope for the best but once in a while bad things happen.
The key is to learn from your mistakes and this blog will help you to learn from other people’s mistakes so you don’t have to suffer.
Shaft killing queen
As soon as you see the picture, you know what happened. The poor girl was mowing and ran into an old tree stump! This is why it’s so important to know your mowing areas. Intimately!
As soon as she hit the stump, the blade bent and the mower stopped. The blade is a write-off, heading straight to the recycling bin. But what many people don’t realize is that these collisions also kill the shaft that holds the blade and spins it.
The mower might work for a bit, if you can handle the massive vibrations. But eventually you have to replace the shaft at a cost of C$350 or so; and the mower is never the same.
Then you have to hope that the employee learned her lesson.
Vas made a mistake?
Is it possible for a twenty season landscape veteran to make a mistake? Yes, it is. Check this out.
Last week I was helping out with lawn care and one of the areas I had to mow was a fire lane which gets mowed at a lower setting. So I dropped the wheels and got it done.
Then, like a good teammate, I continued mowing except I forgot to put the wheels back up. I know, shocking.
This is a spectacular 360 degree scalp. As you can tell, I don’t often mow at this site. So, what do you do?
First, you laugh it off. I’m the landscape supervisor guru on site; I can blame it on someone, if I want to.
Second, grab a line trimmer and blend the scalp in so it doesn’t stand out so much.
Third, if you’re really panicked, sprinkle some fresh green clippings on top to hide the scalp temporarily.
Lessons
Successful lawn care demands that you get to know your mow areas intimately. This helps you identify any hazards and tricky spots.
And don’t forget to change your wheel settings, if you change them.
Mistakes will happen. Learn from them and don’t repeat them.
