Leaf Removal
We clean the leaves off your lawn to prevent dead spots caused by a lack of sunlight. During our leaf clean-up, we also blow the leaves out of landscape beds and shrubs to keep your landscape looking elegant. By removing the leaves from beds promptly, we can reduce the decomposition of leaves, deterring the growth of future weeds on top of the weed-preventative fabric. Our mulch and bag technique increases the speed of leaf decomposition in your lawn to add organic material back into the lawn’s soil for natural fertilization. This technique will leave the lawn leaf-free while preserving the soil benefits leaves are naturally intended to provide.
Leaf clean-up can be quite a time-consuming task. When we first opened our business, we attempted leaf clean-up via hand raking and hauling of the leaves with tarps and walled trailers. Even the smallest yards took hours to finish. We lost so much money, we actually stopped our leaf services for a few years. Fortunately, the problem didn’t go away and the calls kept coming to set up a leaf clean-up. So after a few different strategies, we finally found a way to knock the average 7,500 square-foot lawn down to approximately just 1 hour of clean-up work. Knowing approximately how long it took us to clean up the leaves, we were able to figure up an hourly rate with a minimum charge to account for the leaf clean-up time and hauling and disposal of the leaves after the lawn was cleaned up.
For leaf clean-up services, we charge $150/hour with a $150 minimum. So if we can get your leaves cleaned up in less than 1 hour and 20 minutes, you’d get charged $150 our min fee. Otherwise, it’s just $150/hour. We pro-rate the charges for cleaning up the leaves to be as fair as possible. Our pro-rated charges are typically rounded up or down to the nearest 5 minutes. We don’t charge the time it takes us to drive to and from the disposal site between each clean-up. Our time to do the leaf clean-up is billed based on the time we arrived and the time we left your residence. Since the amount of leaves can change, literally, overnight, we found no other fair way to approach the Fall leaf clean-up situation.
Many of our customers want to know how many times they need to do a leaf clean-up and when they should get it scheduled. Unfortunately, this answer is going to be different for everyone. Our best answer is for a customer to keep an eye on their trees and their neighbor’s trees around their property. Most year’s the leaves tend to drop in waves. The elms and walnuts tend to drop their leaves early along with several other species. The next big drop tends to be half of the maples and half of the oaks. Finally, the pears and the rest of the maples shed their leaves. The remaining trees (usually Pin Oaks) will hold some of their leaves until bud break the following year forces them to drop. So three to four visits for leaf removal is probably the appropriate number in our area.
The challenge is that each growing season is different around the Springfield, Missouri area. Depending on the conditions of the growing season, some years we may have more or less leaves and they may drop sooner or later. So inevitably, we recommend 2-4 leaf clean-up and removal services each year. As long as piles of leaves don’t sit wet and piled up in an area for more than a week or two, they shouldn’t kill off the grass. If they’ve been sitting for a while now, and you are in Springfield, Nixa, or Ozark, you should probably give us a call soon. Our number is (417) 837-1578 in case you’re running out of time to get on our schedule before your lawn starts getting choked out by the leaves.
