The secret
This is the secret to scoring new landscape side-gigs: there is no secret, it’s a matter of time and chance. I scored the work described in this blog post purely by accident.
This is how it often happens. Neighbours see you working and approach you for help. You are unable to say no and soon you’re doing extra side work.
I was in the neighbourhood to fertilize a lawn when a neighbour approached me about cutting their half of a shared lawn island. Sure, I could do it because it took less than five minutes.
There is always more
But there is always more. Soon I was led into the backyard to assess the lawn. And it looked fine considering it was still early April. I offered to fertilize the lawn, top-dress a few weak spots with the client’s soil bags and over-seed.
The client also mentioned lawn aeration and I told him the default answer I always give to lawn owners: if you don’t do anything to your lawn all year, then at least aerate it. Aeration allows water and oxygen to reach the root zone and should, in theory, lead to a healthier lawn.
Since the lawn wasn’t large enough to justify machine rental I brought my hand aerator and knocked it off in half an hour.
Herbs?
Once I finished with the lawn, the client took me to the side of his house to show me his “herbs”. He really meant weeds. In this case it was mainly Western Bittercress (Cardamine oligosperma) and some of it had already matured. You can easily tell because when you touch it, the seeds explode.
Pro tip: don’t let your weeds produce flowers or worse, seeds!
Allegedly his wife was mad at him for not weeding the side of the house so he was happy to off-load this work on me. And I gladly did it for C$35 an hour during a pandemic but I did go to bed early after a long day.
Important question
Looking at the weeds, the client asked me how to deal with the weeds. And this should be the takeaway from this blog post.
You can:
- weed and cultivate more often so there isn’t a problem
- prevent the weeds from flowering and consequently from producing seeds that will lodge in your soil
- add bark mulch to deprive the weeds of sunlight (2-3″)
- hire professionals like Vas
Conclusion
There is no big secret to getting new side-gigs. Many times people will approach you when they see you working, so be ready. Always carry business cards and a notebook.
You can expect the work load to expand; I went from simple lawn maintenance to weeding a low-profile area nobody wanted to touch.
Never let weeds produce flowers and seeds; weed and cultivate often. Add mulch if you can.
Hire professionals if you’re too busy or your pockets are deep. It’s nice to get extra work when a pandemic stalls the entire economy.
