Essential Safety Tips for Lawn Care

Whether you’re a property owner or work in the landscaping profession, lawn maintenance is a rewarding but demanding task. Achieving a lush, beautiful lawn and garden is the ultimate goal and helps elevate your property’s curb appeal and value. Still, it’s a task that needs a wide variety of equipment such as lawnmowers, string trimmers and various chemicals.

In this comprehensive guide, we explore the essential lawn and yard care safety tips. We’ll also highlight both the hidden and obvious hazards that every gardener should be aware of whether you’re a DIYer or professional.

The Importance of Personal Protective Equipment

Our first section under the magnifying glass is the use and importance of Personal Protective Equipment or PPE. This is the first line of defense between you and the large amount of garden hazards and its importance can never be overstated.

Starting from the top, you should wear safety glasses at all times to protect the eyes from flying debris. This is especially important when using powerful tools such as a lawn mower, chainsaw or string trimmer. Additionally, you’re probably going to be using a range of chemicals that can cause a lot of damage to the eyes so protection from exposure to these is paramount.

We’d also recommend headgear such as a hard hat if you’re undertaking any task that could cause heavy debris to fall from above you such as a tree or tall bush pruning. Ear protection such as earplugs or ear muffs are also vital in ensuring you don’t damage your hearing when operating large or loud machinery. This may take time to be obvious, as often, the effects of such things on your hearing happen gradually over time. Still, we cannot stress enough the importance of protecting your ears as much as possible.

Types of Clothing

Moving to the torso, our next recommendation focuses on the types of clothing you should wear. To protect the hands, use a thick pair of hardy gloves. These will keep your hands and fingers safe from sharp thorns, branches, or twigs. An extra benefit of the gloves is that your hands will have more protection from blisters and calluses, which can lead to complications should any open wound get an infection from the bacteria in the shrubbery and soil. Additionally, the gloves will add an extra layer of protection when handling the harmful substances involved in your yard service.

Another important tip is to wear long-sleeved and long trouser-legged clothing. The more skin you’re able to cover, the more protected you are from the elements, such as sunburn or chilblains, as well as cuts and wounds caused by the foliage.

Finally, we come down to the feet. You must choose suitable footwear when undergoing outdoor work; we highly recommend close-toed safety boots, ideally with steel toe caps, to avoid damage to the feet while operating heavy machinery, for example. In some conditions, sturdy footwear can also prevent dangerous slips, trips, and falls, which could cause further injuries.

To summarize, we recommend:

• A well-fitting hard hat. This is essential for those jobs with potential falling debris.
• Good spec safety glasses. To keep your eyes safe from chemicals and foreign objects.
• Ear Protection. Always essential when manning loud equipment to keep your hearing safe.
• Long-sleeved and long-legged clothing. This will protect the body from injury from nicks and cuts and irritation from foliage, as well as shielding from the elements.
• Hardy gloves. Vital in protecting the hands and wrists from injury.
• Sturdy Footwear. Important to keep feet safe and prevent slips and falls in tricky terrain.

How To Ensure Safe Operation of Lawn Maintenance Equipment

It may seem obvious, especially to seasoned lawn and landscape maintenance professionals, but we cannot stress enough the importance of reading user manuals before using and operating any equipment. Perhaps you’ve just upgraded your tools or found something new to tackle a particularly stubborn job; either way, we always suggest you read over the safety tips and user guides of any newly purchased tools or chemicals, even if you’ve used them before. Guidelines change, and manuals often have updates to reflect the most recent health and safety policies. Therefore, keeping up to date with the instructions is a worthwhile task. This ensures that you are operating your tools safely, keeping limbs, digits, and the rest of you safe and unharmed.

Our next top tip for your yard maintenance equipment is to ensure that you keep on top of essential, regular equipment maintenance. Keeping your tools in top condition ensures a much safer use of them when carrying out tasks. So consider changing dulled blades on your mowers and saws and topping up oil and lubricants in motorized equipment.

Also, ensure that you regularly check the functionality of the safety features, such as safety guards and kill switches. These suggestions help you operate your tools safely, as the wear and tear on these can cause safety concerns if you aren’t checking often enough.

Safe Storage and Handling

Something that can often get overlooked when discussing safety with lawn care is ensuring that you safely store and handle your fuel, lubricants, and other chemicals and the powered tools they are used for. Keep your fuel in recommended containers and canisters and correctly store them, away from potential ignition sources such as direct sunlight or heat. Proper fuel storage helps prevent incidents such as fires and environmental accidents, so ensure they are left in a well-ventilated, secure space away from high-traffic areas to prevent access to unauthorized personnel.

To summarize, we recommend:

• Read the manual. This is crucial when purchasing a new piece of equipment or something you haven’t used before.
• Regular Equipment Maintenance. Whether it’s checking lubricant levels or blade sharpness, maintenance helps you to avoid injury.
• Regular safety feature checks. As these features are often relied on, keeping them in working condition is important.
• Safe Fuel Storage. Avoid unwanted accidents by keeping your fuel stored away from the ignition and in well-ventilated areas.

Our Top Tips for Environmental Safety

Environmental safety is crucial to any outdoor work, such as lawn maintenance and yard work. We must always ensure that any garden upkeep or landscaping activities happen without environmental impacts for both your own person and the working site in mind.

When it comes to personal safety, we are considering how the environment you are working in can impact your own health. Firstly, let’s consider heat and sun awareness. You must always be aware of heat stress on your body. This can come in the form of signs such as dizziness or headaches after working in the heat for a prolonged period. You should ensure that you take regular breaks when landscaping and have proper hydration throughout the day.

Wearing a hat and applying sunscreen is another way to help safeguard you from the elements, such as the sun. Keeping to shaded areas and being conscious of the best times of day to work or avoiding working at all all help. They diminish and reduce the risk of sunburn, sunstroke, or heat exhaustion.

Chemical Safety with Lawn Maintenance

Moving on to chemical safety, we have to consider both your personal safety and that of the ecosystem you are working with. First, please ensure you have read the label and safety guides for any chemical you’re handling, whether it’s fertilizer, weed killer, or pesticides. Keep your PPE in top condition, protecting your skin and body from chemical burns and irritations. Aim to use these in ventilated areas, or put on a mask so your nose and mouth are covered where appropriate.

When using these products, you should also be aware of the environmental impact they could have on the site you are working at or the surrounding areas. Aim to keep the chemicals away from water sources. Also use water resources sensibly to avoid unnecessary water runoff, which could carry pollutants to nearby water sources.

To summarize, we recommend:

• Be aware of heat and sun. A knowledge of the signs and symptoms of heat exhaustion can help to keep you safe when working in warmer conditions.
• Regular breaks in the shade. Keeping up to date with high temperatures helps you to plan important breaks to stay out of peak heat times.
• Use chemicals safely. Follow the instructions carefully and keep chemicals away from water sources.

Stay Aware of Your Surroundings During Lawn Maintenance

When carrying out yard maintenance, it is suggested that you always inspect the work area for debris. This could be elements such as rocks, toys, or other items that could damage equipment or become projectiles if caught in high-powered tools such as a lawn mower. These items could be launched at such a speed that they become a threat to personal safety or that of surrounding bystanders.

Whether you are working in your own garden or are a hired professional, always be aware of children or pets belonging to the household. These can become unexpected hazards that may enter the work site without warning. So always ensure pets are safely out of the way and children are kept at a safe distance.

Another factor to consider is the whereabouts of power cables, power supply cords, or other outlets. These can easily be missed and damaged by your equipment, such as cut by a blade or waterlogged by a pressure washer. These can require expensive repairs or create safety issues such as electrocution.

To summarize, we recommend:

• Inspect the work area for objects. Small items and debris can make dangerous projectiles when picked up by machinery.
• Keep children and pets away from the site. Pets and children can be unpredictable and should be kept away from the working area.
• Be aware of power cords. Power supply cables could be damaged by tools, creating expensive repairs or even injury through electrocution.

Use Proper Lifting Techniques

Our final section highlights the importance of using proper safety techniques. These are to avoid injuries when moving and handling heavy equipment, machinery, and landscape objects. Firstly, as per standard safety training, ensure correct posture; bend the knees and keep the back straight to provide a balanced, well-controlled lift, using the strength in the legs. It is also vitally important that you know your own limitations when lifting and seek assistance when required.

To summarize, we recommend:

• Ensure correct posture. Following guidelines, bend your knees and keep your back straight when lifting heavy objects.
• Ask for assistance. Know your limits and ask for help when maneuvering large items.

Conclusion

Lawn and garden maintenance, whether you are an owner or a landscaper, is a highly satisfying endeavor. However, you should always take the necessary precautions when undertaking any task.

If you are looking for a professional service to bring fresh life to your garden, lawn, or yard, then we welcome you to sign up at Mow & Blow, where you can request a quote from our verified professionals. These experienced locals are on hand to provide the best revamping to any outdoor space.

You should also check us out if you’re a professional yourself. Once you create an account, you’ll be able to access our great software (mobile and web apps) to receive advice and safety tips to help you get the most from your gardening ventures.