Greenbest Ltd

The job of a lawn care professional is to apply and carry out the necessary treatments that enable a lawn to be healthy and green. However, in order to achieve the perfect lawn, customers will need to help out too! If your winter lawn care services do not include mowing, edging and leaf sweeping then these must be done by the customer. 

Keep off the lawn when it is frosty

Frost does not pose a significant threat to the long-term health of lawns. However, walking on a frosty lawn can do visible damage. At such low temperatures the grass plants are in a delicate state. Walking on the lawn will cause damage to the leaves and affect the overall appearance of the lawn. In addition, as the lawn is in a dormant state, the damage will take far longer than usual to be repaired.

Keep the lawn free from leaves and debris

This is my number one rule of winter lawn care. Light is in short supply during the winter. Any leaves or fallen branches lying on the lawn can quickly cause the grass underneath to die back. This will leave unsightly yellow or bare patches on the lawn. If sensible for the species in question, pruning overhanging trees and/or shrubs is a good idea to allow more light to reach the lawn. In addition to this, it is a good idea to move any garden furniture inside or away from the lawn.

Service the mower early

Hardly anyone is thinking about their garden machinery right now. However, this is the perfect time for your customers to service their mowers before the rush in the spring. Encourage them to check the sharpness of the blades regularly; a clean cut makes a lot of difference to the look and health of a lawn.

Don’t panic when it snows, or if it floods

Snow is not ideal for lawns but trying to remove it is likely to do more harm than good to the grass underneath. Tell your customers to sit back, enjoy the view and keep warm! Children will cause some damage when they play in the snow but it’s very difficult to deny them the experience, customers might as well make the most of it and go out and join in the fun!

Small floods will not permanently harm a lawn. If the water has drained within a week then the grass will return to normal relatively quickly. If the flood lasts longer than a week there may be a problem. In this case, you will need to investigate the lawn once the water is gone to assess the damage. Encourage customers to avoid walking on sodden lawns as this can easily damage and compact them.

Keep mowing!

“It’s had its last cut of the year” is a phrase we hear a lot when the temperature drops in late autumn. Although grass is dormant in the colder months it does grow albeit very slowly. Mowing is an important part of winter lawn care, your customers should raise the mowing height and keep mowing at least every other week when not frosty. A very small amount of clippings will be removed but the lawn will be left invigorated, neat and tidy.

Following the global supply chain crisis, there is a shortage of fertiliser around the world. Accompanying this shortage, global fertiliser prices have soared. This is causing a big issue within horticulture, agriculture, sports and amenity. But what is causing this global supply chain crisis and how long will it last?

Much of the current supply chain crisis is caused by the covid pandemic and its continuing effects on our interconnected global economy. From factory shutdowns to increasing energy prices or port closures. Countries coming out of lockdown and reducing their restrictions have had a dramatic effect on the world’s ability to produce and supply goods.

At the start of the pandemic, the UK and most economies around the world shrank as consumers, due to uncertainty and lack of ability to spend (lockdowns), held onto their money. 

Following the decrease in demand, factories reduced output, and some even closed.  The reduced staffing levels meant increased unemployment, leading to people further reducing their spending on goods.

On the other side, the need for PPE and medical equipment increased around the world. The majority are manufactured and shipped from China to countries that may not export much themselves. This caused a shortage of shipping containers as empty containers are stacked at ports with nothing to export.

Fast forward to the end of lockdown and the start of vaccinations, the global demand surged. But, with a lack of shipping options, the prices naturally increased as the demand far exceeded the supply. 

The ships that were able to transport goods were held in queues outside ports that were not able to keep up with demand (due to the surge and reduced staffing levels). Haulage drivers that were let go during the pandemic left many containers stranded in port, leading to further issues for the ports and factories. And the supply chain crisis goes round again! 

How is the global supply chain crisis affecting the fertiliser industry? 

In the fertiliser industry, we have seen other issues arise over and above the reduced factory outputs and lack of container availability. We have seen countries purchasing huge reserves of fertilisers (especially urea), bans on the export of bulk fertilisers (China) and energy costs increasing throughout Europe and the rest of the world. 

Energy cost increases will affect most factories but with fertilisers being so linked to energy prices and the production of energy, this has caused major factories around the world to cut and even stop output until this reduces. Furthermore, this has further increased prices and reduced availability.

How long will this last?

This is a very difficult question to answer with any certainty, many factors will affect the global demand and supply:

• New strains causing big shocks to economies and global fertiliser output
• Long term energy prices and supply
• Reduced shipping options (as high polluting ships are decommissioned to reduce carbon footprint)
• How quickly ports can catch up with demand

We have been told by many suppliers of fertilisers they see problems easing in the middle of 2022. However, many shipping companies are saying the issues will run to 2023 – so it could be longer.

The best way to cope with this is to be organised and manage your fertiliser stock well. Not only will this ensure you have availability of fertiliser, but potentially you’ll secure better pricing than your competitors who purchase later in the year.

Concerned about your supply of fertiliser? 

What is Purity Soil Conditioner?

If you walk through the hills in certain areas of China you will see the classic waist-high clipped neatness of tea plantations, not a flower or seed anywhere to be seen on the manicured bushes. However, let those bushes grow and they become substantial trees 20 to 30ft tall. They flower and produce seeds that are about the size of a conker and similar in colour. These seeds from the Camellia sinensis tree are harvested and exploited for the tea seed oils that are squeezed from them using steam and an auger press. The tea seed saponin sources in Purity are often confused with tea tree oils which come from a totally different plant from a totally different continent.

At GreenBest we are continuously scouting the world for new fertiliser ingredients, especially organic ones, and many of these ingredients are by-products from other processes. We realised that the residual saponin content within the tea seeds combined with the trace elements and small amount of NPK made an ideal soil conditioner ingredient. So we devised a method to combine it with activators that made it suitable for sports and other amenity turf conditions.

We have the tea seed pulp dried for us in China and then we bring many hundreds of tonnes over to our factory in Somerset. Here we crush it, sieve it, dry it again and combine it with other ingredients to form it into Purity, one of the premier products that we market under the Velvit branded range. 

The Velvit range is a complete, ready to go range of sports turf fertilisers, wetting agents and soil conditioners that we market through distributors across the UK, Europe, the Middle East and Asia. 

Webinars are one of the top resources requested by GreenBest customers. Thanks to the expansion of our Innovation Centre last year, we now have a fully equipped studio dedicated to webinar streaming. We are excited to start bringing our customers and contacts informative, free webinars on a regular basis.

Our webinars will be advertised here on the blog, in our email newsletters and through our social media channels. If you are an existing customer you can also look out for customer-only webinars that will be advertised in the customer portal.

Update your knowledge

Webinars are a great way to update your knowledge in a short space of time. We’ll bring you webinars with information about exciting new products, especially those in our Velvit and SmartLawn product range. We will also bring you industry-specific information and help you understand how it affects your business.

Watch anywhere

You’ll be able to watch our webinars from your computer, tablet and even on the go with your mobile phone. If you have signed up for a webinar but didn’t make it on time then don’t worry, we’ll send you a link to watch the replay.

A select list of webinars will also be available to watch on our YouTube channel. Great for sharing with your colleagues or customers.

We’ve recently added some new features to our online customer portal to improve your user experience. Read on to find out more about the changes. You can help us continue to improve this service; please contact us with your suggestions and feedback sales@greenbest.co.uk

What is the customer portal?

We launched our online customer portal in January 2022 and it’s been a big hit with customers so far! The portal provides instant access to current product prices and information any time of the day or night. Customers are also using our portal to view their order history and place orders online at their convenience.

Find out more about the customer portal in this blog post

Contact us for access to our portal demonstration webinar

GreenBest is a British manufacturer with extensive knowledge of fertiliser export throughout Europe and worldwide. We can organise road freight for European orders and sea freight for customers that are further afield. Wherever you are in the world, we can work with you. GreenBest can export your goods from our factory to your warehouse or directly to your customer.

We export any fertiliser manufactured by us. Our sales team will work with you to develop your own brand range of bespoke fertiliser. Alternatively, we can agree on a distributorship for our range of premium sports turf fertiliser called Velvit.

Find out more about becoming a Velvit distributor here.

Made in Britain

In the last year, we have exported our goods to over 25 countries including; Ireland, Austria, Poland, Mauritius, Qatar and Australia. These account for around 33% of our business. We are members of Made in Britain, a non-profit organisation that allows buyers worldwide to source genuine British-made products.