Weather is a Factor
Running a service business that is impacted by weather is always a challenge. It requires an organization to get these treatments done in a timely manner. This means applying treatments when the time is best for your lawn. Spring and Fall can be very challenging if Mother Nature decides to rain a little bit more than expected, or if Winter hangs on a little too long and pushes schedules back. Crabgrass control, grub control, weed control, and other materials have a limited window to work at their best so you’re lawn service is trying the best they can to take care of every client with the best of care.
If they are committed to high quality and have integrity, they will try to make the right decision. Days that call for heavy or steady rain all day will not be great days for treating lawns. It’s days like these that we often call-off our lawn care technicians and perform these treatments another day. However, we all know that weather and its forecasts can be fickle, and there are days that require us to try to get what we can accomplished until Mother Nature changes her mind and sends our technicians home early. Likewise, there are stray thunderstorms and downpours that can pop-up from time to time.
Before you assume your lawn care treatment was rendered ineffective, it’s important to understand how lawn care materials work. These materials come in one of two forms, granular and liquid.
Granular Materials
Products such as fertilizer, crabgrass pre-emergent, grub control,
surface-feeding insect control, some fungicides, and limestone are commonly granular. These small pellets don’t do their job until they dissolve. They
need the rain to get down into the soil and into the turfgrass. Even if it rains after your lawn care treatment, the likelihood of these materials running off is rare. Pellets will usually sink in water versus float, and get lodged in between grass blades, thatch, and root mass.
Even if some does wash out, it’s very rare that you’ll loose a substantial portion during a downpour. Remember, if your lawn treatment is put down one day and it doesn’t rain for a couple days and then pours, it’s the same thing as if it rained immediately after the treatment. You and your lawn should be fine.
Liquid Materials
Products such as
broadleaf weed control, nutsedge control, and post-emergent crabgrass control are often applied in a liquid form, sprayed either in a fine mist from nozzles on a piece of equipment or out of hand-held spray gun. Labels vary for restrictions of watering and/or precipitation. Most materials are completely effective if they have a chance to dry on the leaf tissue. The warmer the temperature and the lower the humidity, the quicker this happens. We’ve seen materials dry within as little as 15 minutes.
On days that the forecast has a potential for rain, we often have our technicians add a surfactant material to their tanks. This material acts as a sticker that helps materials such as these stay put on leaf tissue in the even of rainfall.
Conclusion
We hope we’ve answered “What happens if it rains after my lawn care treatment?” for you. Most of the time we encounter rain after a treatment, the products still do their job. However, it is possible to get a substantial portion of these washed off if it were to rain heavy within that first hour after treatment.
When this happens, we request that the client takes a look at their weeds approximately 10-14 days after the treatment. If the weeds still appear to be unaffected by the materials (which is the minority of times), we would be happy to return to the property to perform this part of the lawn care program again. This is a rare exception, but one of the treatments we will stand behind our results to make sure you are happy.If it’s been 10-14 days since your last weed control treatment and aren’t seeing results because of an immediate rain event, please contact us.
