Always something!
After twenty five seasons in the field, I can say I’ve seen a lot of craziness from landscapers. One crazy thing involves pruning clean ups. Now, many dudes don’t like gardening; they prefer to use machines, make a lot of noise, create pollution and hope to “milk it” long enough to avoid real finesse work. Work that requires rakes and cultivators.
Pruning is done in mid-season after plants push out new growth and again in fall before the season ends and frost appears. Shrubs are common targets like Japanese holly (Ilex crenata). This holly actually flowers in summer and bees love the tiny white flowers. You will see the bees before you see the flowers. For that you have to get really close to the shrub.
If you’ve never seen Japanese holly flowers that’s probably because the shrubs get sheared as soon as they push out new growth. I got lucky when I filled in for a vacationing foreman and his shaggy holly was covered in insects. So I came close to investigate and then I saw the beautiful white flowers. That was my first time!
Clean up
As much as I like Japanese hollies, the tiny bits of green left behind after pruning are extremely annoying to clean up. So you rake up and pick up what you can, and the rest gets blown back into the shrub or to your unsuspecting neighbour’s place.
Now, here’s the scam: a worker approaches you with a plausible offer to blow the pruning debris in order to speed up the cleaning process. It sounds ok, doesn’t it? Why rake when you can just blow it all into a pile? Except the offer was made by a marginal worker who prefers to waste time on blowing instead of raking. And his blowing is painfully slow.
Headache
It was maddening to arrive at a planted bed and discover that it had been covered in Japanese holly debris even though it doesn’t have any hollies in it. Obviously, the dude just blasted it from one bed into another, not really making any piles, just a lot of mess. And it took a long time; time he could have used to rake up and blow the remnants only.
Clearly, this was a ploy to avoid clean ups and waste time on the blower. I know because I’ve been working as a landscape professional for twenty five years.
Easy does it!
Here’s how you do it: keep the crew together and rake up the debris as best as you can. Then, blow off the debris remnants. Personally I like to blast it back into the hedge; or you can make a remnant pile. But it’s not easy because the shredded green bits are tiny.
Notice how the crew stays together and we only blow once. That’s how you do it! Never try to scam me.
