Proper equipment maintenance

Benjamin Moretta, owner of Moretta Lawn & Landscape in Canton, Ohio, and John Benefield, lawn care specialist at Green Leaf Nursery based in Glasgow, Kentucky say checking the calibration on their spreading equipment is paramount. Moretta uses a skid sprayer.

“Making sure that the output’s correct, that’s crucial,” he says. “If you don’t put out the right amount of weed control product there’s a potential that you’re not going to get any kill out of it. If you put down too much there’s potential you could burn the turf.”

Benefield uses a sprayer that sprays liquid and granular at the same time. He tries to perform maintenance on the machine according to the recommended schedule in the owner’s manual.

“I always just make sure all the fittings are greased. I change the oil every 100 hours,” he says.

Lastly, Benefield recommends paying attention to whether the product is being spread evenly. “You don’t want your spreader to be spreading more on one side than the other. That can make the lawn look bad,” he says.