Analyze the needs of customers’ lawns

Benjamin Moretta has been fertilizing lawns for customers for 16 years now. During that time, no two applications have ever been the same.

“My fertilization program has never been the same from year to year. It constantly changes,” says Moretta, who is owner of Moretta Lawn & Landcare, based in Canton, Ohio.

Moretta also stresses the importance of continually adopting new best practices.

“A lot of it has to do with drought or sufficient amounts of rain, just depending on how the year goes as far as how much nitrogen’s going down, when it’s going down, timing with rainstorms,” he says. “It’s one of those things that if you stay stagnant, your results won’t meet the expectations of the client.”

Moretta Lawn & Landcare serves both residential and commercial customers. Residential customers are primarily high-end, requiring weekly pruning, deadheading of annuals and other landscape maintenance. The company has six employees and an annual revenue of $500,000.

Moretta uses a combination of semi-organic products and synthetic weed controls. The organic product is liquid and the synthetic product is granular. Typically, he offers five total applications per year on any given property.

Read the full article from our March issue here.