Time management
I follow one rule in my landscape maintenance work: I don’t start projects I can’t finish. This popped into my head today as I was shooting YouTube video shorts in the neighbourhood and then I saw this mess. There was a line of frozen leaf piles lined up by the curb. I’m not a fan. What happened?
If I had made these piles I would have picked them up. In residential strata maintenance this kind of work generates a lot of phone complaints. And rightly so. In a commercial setting, it’s not as bad.
So you can stay longer and pick up the piles or, you can park them on site. For example, by blasting the leaves into the ivy edge. Incidentally, my most-watched YouTube short video, deals with this topic.
It was getting dark and I still had lots of oak leaf drop to pick up so I blasted the leafiness into a laurel hedge and behind it against the wall. Then a few weeks later I blew it out and picked it up. No harm done, no complaints. I was desperate.
I believe this was a better solution than leaving leaf piles on the grass for the company employees to walk by next day.
Same story with pruning
I used to have a landscape manager who would show up, prune like mad and leave us to clean up the mess. Having enough time for clean-ups is critical because your clean-ups should match your pruning. And you need time to properly clean up all of your clippings and debris.
You definitely can’t leave piles of green waste on site to freeze. That’s why the people pruning must always check on the people doing the pruning. Is everything on target? If it’s not clear then stop pruning until the clean-ups catch up. Simple.
Driving by the frozen leaf piles makes me wonder what happened. Don’t do this! Instead follow my rule:
If you can’t finish, don’t start it. Come back on another day and crush it.
