Tarps vs raking
Tarps are what I consider one of my 'secret weapons'. I've always had a number of different sizes, all heavy duty, all gray. Made it confusing for my occasional helper.
This season, actually, it was one of my two New Year's resolutions, was to create a no-brainer system for defining which size was which size. I used to use a fat marker and mark all the corners with the dimensions of that tarp. Ink would wear off in a short time and I was right back where I started.
Realizing that only the bigger tarps need to be heavy duty, the smaller ones can be lighter. They're cheap and more expendable than the big ones, and you don't put heavy loads on them because they're too small to get much on them (disincluding rain-soaked sawdust). Here's what I've come up with:
6 x 8 at least two.... blue.... from anywhere.
12 x 16 two......orange... from U-Haul
20 x 30 two.... green 'farm duty', ... Northern Hydraulics
30 x 40 Grey heavy duty Lowes, Farm and Fleet, etc
I also have grey 8 x 10's which are hard to confuse with the big mondo 30 x 40, and is more or less dedicated to the zone right between the chipper and the back of the truck.
One last tarp I have is a light-duty 10 x 40 (blue one side, green the other) that I use sometimes to cover bushes, or on narrow driveways.
Most of the time I use tarps, sometimes I don't. Depends on the job. I've never regretted using tarps, only regretted when I hadn't. Windy days can make them a frustrating headache. On snow-covered ground, they're a godsend as they skid quite well, and, have you ever tried to rake sticks out of snow....?.
I've gotten a lot of jobs because of the tarps. They make you stand out. Tarps are good advertising. They show to the passing community you care about low-impact care to the client's lawn, when really, you're intent is to speed your cleanup and keep your rake time down....
oh, you can still rake if you're so inclined. Raking material, and dragging brush across a tarp is actually easier than across lawn as you're overcoming friction by creating an artificial smooth surface. Raking sawdust is never an easy thing. If it's on a tarp, it becomes a non-event.
Last thing, it helps to pin the corners of the tarps down, especially if there's wind. I used to use fiberglass tent stakes, but they're kinda hard to find, and cost money. I used to use sticks I'd find on site, and jam them through a hole I'd created near the corner grommets. Now I've refined it to two ways, which I combine with each other. Mini biners for the corner grommets, work great to attach to chain link fence or a branch on a bush, and then the greatest revelation I've yet found..... chopsticks. You get them at Chinese market, or grocery store, Oriental section They cost ~ $2 for a
hundred pair, and the'yr custo-designed for this task. You can fit one pair through a grommet, But I find splitting the pair, and using one single chopstick per grommet, just the corners, push them into the ground at an angle opposing the tarp's direction. This means pinning down one tarp costs you about two cents. They go through the chipper quite well once used, and I had a pack of 100 last me most of the Summer. -TM-
