Partner Content
Founded in 1973, Waynes serves residential customers in Alabama, Mississippi, and Tennessee. The company offers year-round lawn care. Zac Fleming, lawn supervisor for the Huntsville branch of Waynes, says there are many reasons their customers choose them including having educated technicians and using the best chemicals available.
“We don’t shy from chemicals,” Fleming says. “We use the best chemicals that are allowed for us to use. We follow all the EPA and state guidelines on rates so we get the most out of our chemicals by buying the best chemicals that we think are out there.”
The company has to deal with prolific weeds like yellow nutsedge, purple nutsedge, and Virginia buttonweed because pre-emergent chemicals are unable to control their root systems.
Around eight or nine years ago, Fleming says they tested out Blindside, a postemergence herbicide, that can be applied to warm-season turfgrasses along with Kentucky bluegrass and tall fescue turfgrass.
“It allows the guys not to backpack over the yard multiple times,” Fleming says. “You’re able to hit a lot of weeds at the same time with [Blindside].”
Blindside contains sulfentrazone and metsulfuron-methyl, allowing Waynes to cover a broader spectrum of weeds. Sulfentrazone brings quick results, and metsulfuron-methyl expands the spectrum of weeds even further. Fleming says they use Blindside in combination with Celsius.
“When we go out and spray, our former products were a little bit slower, so we didn’t get those fast, visual results,” Fleming says. “But here with sulfentrazone we’re talking about just in a few days or so, we start getting that yellowing and that browning so it gives a customer a visual to say, ‘Hey yeah they did spray something and it’s working pretty quick.’”
Fleming says this quick visualization has helped improve their customer retention, which is a key factor in growing a successful lawn care company.
“In this business, people want to see results and what you’re done,” Fleming says. “Most the time, that’s hard to achieve with Mother Nature, but that sulfentrazone does allow us to give them a faster visual result instead of a 14 to 21-day type deal with the other products.”
Waynes uses a low-volume spreader sprayer combo to spread Blindside on customer properties. This helps improve his labor cost and improves the efficiency of his technicians.
“I think it’s a great product,” Fleming says. “We like it because it gives us quick results, it controls multiple weeds and it has a low consequence on the Bermuda grass.”
For Turf Masters Lawn Care, based in Roswell, Georgia, they service around 45,000 residential properties. Matt Lieter, VP of operations for Turf Masters, says their customers choose them because they are the best at what they do and provide customer service.
The weeds they deal with include chickweed, doveweed, crabgrass and sedges. They have been using Blindside for three seasons now. Lieter says they heard about the herbicide from vendors and others in the industry. They had been having trouble controlling summer weeds and sedges with the products they were using.
“We looked at the formulation and figured we could get a better result than what we had been using at that time,” Lieter says. “It is nice to see results on the more difficult weeds like Virginia buttonweed. Seeing sedges and kyllinga show signs of decline and/or suppression is a beautiful thing.”
Lieter says they have improved their retention rate by two to three percent every season they have used Blindside.
For more information about Blindside, contact your local FMC distributor or local FMC Market Specialist. To find Your local FMC Market Specialist: 1. Visit FMCprosolutions.com 2. Click on ‘Find an FMC Rep’
This article was published in the Jan/Feb issue of the magazine.
