The Edge January/February 2026

THE AGRONOMIST

The Agronomist: Plan Your Lawn Care Season with Care or Prepare to Fail

BACK WHEN I STARTED MY OWN LAWN CARE COMPANY IN 2000, the very first big contract that I landed was with the quaint Massachusetts town where my fledgling business was located. On paper, the contract seemed straightforward enough – fertilize and lime a bunch of athletic fields during Thanksgiving break. As an aside, no matter how I tried, I could not convince the customer that fertilizer and lime were not pesticides and did not require the schools to be shut down in order for me to apply them. At a certain point, you just shrug your shoulders and press onward.

it was a brutal winter, it stayed frozen until spring. Obviously, I never forgot that little inci dent and neither did anyone else in the lawn care business local to me. If you still had production left on the books, it was gone, never to be realized. I bring this up be cause I’m writing my column in the wake of this Thanksgiv ing Day holiday weekend. After eating far too much turkey and completely overdosing on football, I made my way to New Hampshire to speak at the annual meeting of the Vermont Green scapes Association. Yes, you read that right, the Vermont associ ation has their meeting in New Hampshire. Since the venue is a short walk from the state line and the interstate highway, it actually makes a lot of sense. And just like in 2000, as the day of my trip approached, the weather forecast went from bad to worse. Anyone that still had production to complete was running out of time quickly. This points out the critical importance of careful planning for your season yet to come. My old saying is “As goes Round 1, so goes the season” meaning that any missteps you make early in the spring are very difficult to overcome as the rest of the season unfolds. The analogy that I like to make is to compare a lawn care season to a trip on an airplane. The goal of the airplane ride is to land on a very small patch on a runway very far away. Everything the pilots do must align with that goal other wise bad things will happen. The same applies to the lawn care season. You simply cannot allow the season to extend past the date after which snow can ruin things and that means care fully planning during the winter months well in advance. TE

that I post a performance bond. I didn’t give it a second thought because I needed to fill my bank account and performing was the only way to do it. But as Thanks giving approached, the weather forecast turned ominous. A strong storm was brewing that would start as rain and turn to snow, while temperatures would plummet well below freezing. At the time, the ride-on application machines I had would have been useless in that kind of weather. I hasten to add that as I tell this story, we have dramatically changed how we regulate the application of fertilizers generally, and in Massachusetts specifically. Today, I would not agree to a Thanksgiving application as it is far too late in my humble opin ion, never mind any regulatory requirements. You’ll see why I’m bringing this up later on in our story. As Thanksgiving week began, I spent sleepless nights staring at my bedroom ceiling trying to figure out how to escape this predicament. I finally settled on purchasing a Vicon spreader from an ag retailer in western Massachusetts. That settled, I needed a tractor to carry it, not owning one at the time. I begged someone to let me borrow one of theirs, which got me out of that pickle. It was a brutal storm. The rain wasn’t so bad but once the temperature dove below freezing any spilled fertilizer and lime turned to stone and, because

This was a twenty-five-acre job that would require two passes over each field for a total of fifty acres total. No big deal for me – at least I thought so at first. I dutifully planned for a weekend away from family and football (Ok, not Thursday but definitely the remainder of the weekend) and placed the order for the ma terials which would be stocked at the local warehouse a couple of miles away. Here’s where things went off the rails. The contract, for reasons unbeknownst to me, required

By Bob Mann Senior Director of Regulatory and Technical Affairs

8 The Edge // January/February 2026