HELP!!! Tall grass head has seeded down?????

[resq31]

I hope the correct answer to this is not, just cut short...but here it is, sorry if there is a super simple answer for it, just really need some advice. One of the lawns I take care of has pretty high grass right now. This has caused the grass head to seed. We showed up at his phone call request today, expalined polietely that it is raining and the ground is to wet to cut (plust very steep front yard). This house is in a really nice housing plan, and his neighbors lawns look really great. But unfortunate for him, he has hurt his hip and not been able to keep up, so they called me late in the week. I told him the earliest opening I had was Sat. But the weather here in Western PA has been saturated with rain. So this grass is very high, even with taking the top third off of the top will still leave it looking not as manicured as "the jones'es next door". So do I just try and convince them to allow us to return earlier then I normally would, and give them expectations of 3 - 4 cuts to get it back down looking really nice? The advantage is that the home owner likes a higher grass even after the cut. We are bagging all the clippings, they do not want a mulched cut. So I dont want to cut 60% of the length down, please some advise on the best way to manicure this lawn back to looking prestine...???

[CHEESE2009]

Lawn care business tips

Charge him as much as you would per one Month for the one visit you make to do the job. Use your trimmer to take down the grass a few notches. Then mulch it with your mower. Then put the bag on the mower and cut it once again while bagging the clippings. As for the rain, it's not a problem. Tall grass will always retain water, unless he's willing to wait for July (lol). I say, do a good job with the trimmer the next day you have a few hours to spare. Just cut everything down (with your trimmer) to the point your mower can finally do something about it. And always cut "half deck" instead of full deck so air can circulate into where your blades are running and reduce clogging. Make sure you explain to him that the grass will be really yellowish for awhile, and that is should green up within a couple of weeks.

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Last edited by CHEESE2009; 05-15-2011 at 02:41 PM.

[shadrach]

cut 1/3, wait 3-4 days & do it again until it is back in shape.

[Steve]

Take some pictures and let us know how this woks out.

[resq31]

This took a while, no pictures. But got this cut down, looked good. Unfortunately we will not be cutting it any more. Under priced this job big time. So we had told the customer that we needed to increase the price. They did not go for it, said that they had 3 other places who had the same price bid as us so they would call one of them. Strange that they kept calling us for two weeks asking us to reconsider doing this if we could keep the same price. I even admitted to them that this was under priced, they were really getting about 50% off from what it should be.Guess the other places were not priced as low as they thought. But we handled this right and there were no hard feelings when we parted. But that was all my mistake, so I really learned that from now on an acre on a hilll is worth more then a flat acre.....lesson learned, moving forward.

[Steve]

How many cuts and over what period of time did you go with to get it where you wanted it?

Also, what do you feel contributed to the underbidding of the lawn?

[dclawnfl]

Originally Posted by shadrach

cut 1/3, wait 3-4 days & do it again until it is back in shape.

this is what we would do.dont cut then cut then cut,in the same day.give the grass afew days to recoop

[Sprinkler Buddy]

Originally Posted by resq31

This took a while, no pictures. But got this cut down, looked good. Unfortunately we will not be cutting it any more. Under priced this job big time. So we had told the customer that we needed to increase the price. They did not go for it, said that they had 3 other places who had the same price bid as us so they would call one of them. Strange that they kept calling us for two weeks asking us to reconsider doing this if we could keep the same price. I even admitted to them that this was under priced, they were really getting about 50% off from what it should be.Guess the other places were not priced as low as they thought. But we handled this right and there were no hard feelings when we parted. But that was all my mistake, so I really learned that from now on an acre on a hilll is worth more then a flat acre.....lesson learned, moving forward.

Great attitude! That's what it takes to make it in this game. I wouldn't be surprised if they call you back one day.