A call away

The coronavirus couldn’t keep Complete Lawn Care, of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, from starting its season on time.

“At the beginning, in March and April, we did have some commercial companies that cut back, but it really didn’t affect us on the spray side of things, because you’re only there every five or six weeks,” said Bobby Standley, operations manager. “There wasn’t as much rain this spring, so we were able to start on time. The temperatures were perfect for us.”

Complete Lawn Care offers its nearly 900 lawn care customers a seven-step program.

“The first and last (steps) are our spring and fall pre-emergence. In the summertime, we will do a third step, which is an extra lawn treatment to help control nutsedge. Nutsedge is really bad in Oklahoma,” Standley said. ““Rounds 2,4,5 and 6 are all fertilize rounds with a spot-spray of post-emergence for weeds.”

Standley notes that about 95% of the lawn care customers go with the full seven-step program.

“For us, we didn’t really offer a lot of programs other than the seven-steps,” he says.

In addition to Nutsedge, Standley said there are a few other weeds his crews have to be vigilant in eradicating.

“In Oklahoma, Dallisgrass is also really bad,” he said. “It’s hard to control. Some of the chemicals we’re trying to tackle it with aren’t as strong and we have to do multiple service calls on it. Other than Dallisgrass, everything else has been pretty manageable. We’ve run into purple Nutsedge, too, and that can be a challenge.”

But if customers notice the weeds creeping up in their lawns after crews have come by, all they have to do is call and Standley said it’ll be taken care of.

“We do free service calls up to 30 days after every application,” he says. “I always tell the customers that if it looks like there’s nothing changing than give us a call and we’re come back to spot-spray it as a courtesy for you.”

Standley said weed control and proper lawn care is extremely important to his clients, as most are members of homeowners’ associations, with mandates in place.

“Probably 70% of our residential mowing customers go with this (program),” he says. “It’s pretty important to them. A lot of our neighborhoods are HOAs, so they know they have to fertilize and spray. That’s the one thing about our clientele, there aren’t any real sporadic ones, everybody is grouped pretty tight.”

Standley says that while Complete Lawn Care’s weed control and fertilization programs are solid, the company is trying to grow its list of services.

“Our bread and butter is weed control and fertilization,” he said. “We also have a mowing side… we also do mosquito, flea and tick and perimeter pest programs. We have an irrigation program as well. We do overseeding, aeration and maintenance stuff like that as well. There’s some other things in the works, but we haven’t gotten them established yet.”

Just this year, the company rolled out its mosquito control program, and Standley said he has high hopes for it.

Standley mentioned the program got off to a late start because of a cooler than normal spring.

“This is only our first year to do it and we’ve signed up 60 out of our 900 spray customers,” he said. “It’s a learning curve, so we’re gradually growing it and learning as we go.”