Labor is the Achilles’ heel for many landscape maintenance companies. However, utilizing herbicides and plant growth regulators can enhance both the quality and efficiency of your landscape maintenance operations, whether residential or commercial, large or small.
“What we’re trying to do is give clients the clean, green look, but we’re trying to reduce the amount of labor that’s required to do it,” says Joe Ketterer, retired director of quality and efficiency landscape maintenance operations for Ruppert Landscape. “It’s like liquid labor.”
Ketterer will focus on the practical application of both non-selective and selective pre- and post-emergent herbicides for weed control and the use of PGRs for efficient maintenance during his session, “Scalable Strategies for Effective Herbicide and Plant Growth Regulator Use in Landscape Maintenance” on Tuesday, Nov. 4, at 2 p.m. at ELEVATE.
“Some of the things that I will be sharing are proven, not just from a label or from a chemical supplier marketing standpoint, but from an end user standpoint,” Ketterer says. “I’m not talking about anything that I haven’t actually applied myself over the years.”
Utilizing Selective and Non-Selective Herbicides
Ketter says if you want to scale your business up, you need to become efficient with your usage of chemicals.
He says picking the right selective herbicide is similar to prescription medicine, where you need to know your target first.
“There are a number of selective herbicides that are very specific to certain weeds,” Ketterer says. “The only danger is when you put these in the hands of untrained people and they start tank mixing them. I call it witch’s brews.”
Meanwhile, non-selective herbicides are well-suited for treating areas such as gravel parking lots and concrete sidewalks where weeds are breaking through.
“If there are weeds in that curb line, it looks unkept,” Ketterer says. “We want clean and neat, so that is the best use of a non-selective.”
He says it can also be used in more open mulch beds as long as employees know how to control spray drift to protect the ornamental shrubs.
The Power of PGRs
The primary benefit of using plant growth regulators is the ability to reduce labor costs. Instead of having to send out a four-man shear crew four to eight times a year, depending on your market, you can scale back your number of visits. It also improves your team’s overall safety.
“The more you shear, the greater the probability that someone’s going to cut their finger or be tired,” Ketterer says. “One of the more common accidents with the gas shears, the big, long, reciprocating shears, the operator will get tired, and when they lower their arms, they actually slice through their pants and then they get 15 stitches in their thigh.”
However, in order to be successful with PGRS, you have to train your field staff to not shear off the treated tips of the plant. Additionally, crews need to apply the proper dosages as more isn’t better with growth regulators.
Ketterer acknowledges that PGRs can cause some initial sticker shock, but the savings they can create quickly offset this. He says it also helps cut back on your dumping expenses.
“The biggest component of any contract is usually tied up in mowing labor and equipment, right behind that is the bed care and the pruning and the weeding and so on,” Ketterer says. “With the labor market being as tight as it is, if you get really good at this and strategic with where you’re doing it, you can keep that quality look with fewer people.”
He cautions that if someone wants to use the first-generation PGRs because they are cheaper, they need to be mindful of all the label guidelines, as spraying when it’s too hot can result in the plants turning yellow.
Ketterer says, depending on the property type, you may want to select a PGR that slows growth versus stops it altogether.
“Certain growth regulators can actually improve the horticultural characteristics, like flowering and fruiting, and make it look greener, more dense, where that other class of growth regulators arrests cell division and just stops the plant from growing,” he says.
He says PGRs are ideal for use in high-traffic locations or dangerous situations where it is more likely that employees will get hurt while trimming plants back.
“Think of PGRs and herbicides as liquid labor that never calls in sick, doesn’t take vacations or needs HR,” Ketterer says. “Using PGR swaps out the frequent, dangerou,s and destructive manual shearing pieces, and the net is a healthier and more efficient plant care.”
Ready to learn how to tap into liquid labor? Register for ELEVATE and we’ll see you in Phoenix, Arizona.
