[Lawn Tek]

Have a new account that has several small parking islands . It has customer cars parked there 14 hours a day 7 days a week . What approach do you use trimming the islands and clean up of the clippings ? I plan on using a 21 inch mower with a bagger but because the whole parking lot is surrounded by concrete curbing blowing the clippings a long way seems like a bad idea .

 

[CSRA Landscaping]

How wide are the islands, what quality is the turf/terrain, are there any trees/shrubs, etc and if so how much room is there between them and the curb?

 

[Dr. Mow]

maybe spray with a growth regulator / if your liscensed

 

[Rustic Goat]

Is it possible to do these islands in the other 10 hours of the day?

 

[Lawn Tek]

C S R A turf was good sod until other L C O let it burn up , without telling them sprinkler system not working , some of them have bradford pears planted in the middle of the island , they range 3 to 5 foot wide .
Dr Mow , may do that next spring , Pgr's seem to work better with spring growth
Goat that would mean 5 a m to 6 a m window , dont know but with all the cars there its gonna be a pain .

Main question removing trimming clippings ?

 

[HarryD]

I used to work for a guy that had a account that had really long islands. everyone always pulled there car way over the curb so you could not trim under some of the front ends. every other week we would have to show up early before any cars came so we could get the areas that were long and then we would blow the grass around the curbs. sounds like you have a similar situation as we did. we just did our best and left it at that

 

[wojo23323]

Bag with 21" mower and use handheld vacuum to get the rest.

 

[Dr. Mow]

most islands are in commerical parking lots, look up, they normally have lights.
we do a lot of islands 2-3a.m. no cars little traffic. saves a lot of time. but check your local noise ordiences.

 

[mh1314]

If you use a 21" with a bagger, work your trimmer so it throws the cuttings back onto the island, you should have minimal debris, which you could blow back onto the island with a small hand-held blower. As for the cars, you can only work around them.

 

[Island Lawn]

...Just plain gives me the willies when someone mentions
"island trimming"

 

[CSRA Landscaping]

I know this isn't constructive but this is one of those deals that gives me a headache just thinking about it. I really need to think about it before taking on any islands ........

Good luck to you, Kerry.

 

[MacLawnCo]

Kerry,

you could get a commercial wb vac unit (billygoat or the like). A local co here has one for a similar application and it seems to do the trick.

 

[tiedeman]

do it all with a bagger. Trim as close as you can to the cars, not too close because then you will start to have people complain about grass on their vechiles.
We have two accounts like that in particular the one you can't get in from 5:30 am to 7 pm, and the other is 7am to 9pm. It really stinks

 

[fblandscape]

Could you use a mulching kit on your 21" machine???

 

[Lawn Tek]

My 21 will mulch and bag , think I will low rpm trim , bag . May check into one of those vaccum rigs later . One of those accounts that looks good to you , but then you go man what a pain ! We were a lot higher than the other L C O but prop manager was not happy with them , so we'll give it a whirl .
Thanks Gang