Expand Your Market with Top Dressing

Top dressing is an essential procedure in the maintenance of sports fields and golf courses. It is natural, sustainable, and superbly effective. Residential lawns will flourish with the same procedure and it is no wonder this service is gaining in popularity.

For lawn and landscape professionals who want to maintain a profitable business, top dressing represents a great way to share in an expanding market—and to do so responsibly and with sustainability. Today's customers are more attracted to eco-friendly practices that produce great results. Now it’s possible to offer residential clients the same effective procedures previously only available to golf course superintendents and turf managers.

What is top dressing?

Top dressing is the direct application of a layer of soil mixture onto grass. The thickness of this layer varies from 1/8 to 1/4 inch. Top soil is usually used for sports fields, but a soil containing at least 75 percent compost is recommended for residential lawns.

Why top dress?

Whether it is included in a maintenance program or used to restore damaged lawns, top dressing with compost offers many advantages that are usually found in other maintenance procedures but separately. According to Roy Gross, from St. Louis Composting Inc., “We are looking for results when we decide to top dress.”

Top dressing, when applied correctly, rejuvenates a lawn and has a beneficial effect on flowers, trees, and shrubs. The application of one single layer of compost fulfills between 50 to 100 percent of the annual fertilizing needs. Compost is the only slow-releasing soil amendment containing all of the necessary nutrients. Furthermore, compost significantly improves water retention and the soil structure, stimulates microbial activity, breaks down thatch, and neutralizes the pH.

New equipment

Golf courses and sports turf managers are top dressing fans. They are able to top dress between two and four times a year because they work with high-capacity, tractor-drawn equipment. And why are they so diligent? Because top dressing produces great results.

In recent years, the emergence of efficient and easy-to-use equipment designed for residential areas allows landscapers to provide professional top dressing services and respond to increasing demands for natural practices from their customers.

Scott Morrison, from Morrison Power Equipment in Plymouth, MA, states: “We saw the same phenomenon with the introduction of the aerator in the 1990s. Before that, soil aeration was only used on sports fields and golf courses. Today, all professional lawn care companies provide this service in residential areas.”

Expand your customer base

Top dressing allows lawn care professionals to offer a new service that is not a gimmick, but rather an effective and eco-friendly addition to their other services—increasing their market share and their revenue. Dustin McGehee, from Greenside Outdoor Services, Louisville, KY, offers this perspective: “In order to maintain and expand my business, I had two choices: either offer the lowest bid or offer something different. So, I chose top dressing. This method allowed me to stand out from my competitors and acquire new customers.”

There are three steps to offering top dressing services to residential clients: