Property care tips
Property care tips for Durham Region homeowners.
Straight seasonal advice written for Durham soil and Durham weather. Not copied from an American lawn blog.
- Written for Durham, not the internet
- We tell you when you don’t need us
- A new guide most weeks
See all three memberships and what each one covers
Green in summer. Clear in winter.
Why we write these
Most lawn and snow advice online is written for somewhere else. It tells you to spray for weeds, which has been illegal for cosmetic purposes in Ontario since 2009. It gives you a fertilizer schedule built for Georgia. It tells you to aerate in spring, which in a Durham clay soil is close to the worst thing you can do.
Everything on this page is written for the ground under your feet: cool-season grass on the clay and clay-loam soils that run through most of Oshawa, Whitby, Ajax, Pickering and Clarington, in a climate that gives us roughly twenty-six weeks of growing season and twenty to thirty snow events a winter.
You can use every one of these guides to do the work yourself. Plenty of our neighbours do, and we'd rather be the company that told you the truth than the one that sold you something you didn't need. If you'd rather it were simply handled, that's what a membership is.
The guides
Start here
Six guides covering the questions Durham homeowners actually search for. More are added most weeks, and each one is updated as conditions change.
When to start cutting your lawn in Oshawa
The first cut is the one most homeowners get wrong. Soil temperature beats the calendar, and two weeks of patience buys you a better June.
Lawn care · Spring
Read the guide →The right mowing height for a Durham Region lawn
Three inches isn't laziness. It's the cheapest weed control and drought protection available to an Ontario homeowner.
Lawn care · Summer
Read the guide →Aeration and overseeding: Ontario's September window
There's one stretch of the year when aeration and new seed actually work in Durham. Miss it and you've spent the money for nothing.
Lawn care · Fall
Read the guide →The fall cleanup checklist for Durham homeowners
Nine jobs, in the order they should happen, with the two that matter far more than the rest, and the one everybody does too early.
Seasonal · Fall
Read the guide →When does snow actually start in Oshawa?
A month-by-month winter timeline for Durham Region, including why the first real storm almost always arrives before people are ready.
Snow removal · Winter
Read the guide →What snow removal costs in Durham Region
Per-storm, seasonal and bundled pricing compared with real numbers, plus the arithmetic that decides which one is cheaper for you.
Snow removal · Winter
Read the guide →The Durham calendar
What you should be thinking about right now
A one-screen version of the whole year. Every row is covered in one of the guides above, and every row is something we handle for members automatically.
| Weeks | What matters | The mistake to avoid |
|---|---|---|
| Mid-March to mid-April | Cleanup, salt flush, first-cut timing | Cutting before the soil hits 8 °C |
| Mid-April to May | Weekly cutting starts, spring fertilizer | Scalping the first cut short |
| June to August | Height up, water deep and rarely, sharp blades | Watering ten minutes every night |
| September to early October | Aeration and overseeding: the window that works | Aerating in spring instead |
| October to mid-November | Leaves off, final cut lower, snow contract signed | Waiting for the last leaf to fall |
| Mid-November to March | Storm clearing, salt used sparingly | Buying salt on the day of the storm |
Members don't have to track any of this. It's what the schedule is for.
New guides land most weeks
We publish a new guide most weeks through the season, and members get the best ones by email before they go up. If you'd rather not check back, send us your address and we'll add you to the seasonal list: one email a month at most, unsubscribe in one click.
Your year at a glance
Everything above, on one page. Print it and put it inside a cupboard door.
One membership covers everything on this page
Whichever guide brought you here (the first cut in April, the September aeration window or the first storm in November), it is the same twelve months and, for members, the same single arrangement.
The membership that does all of it is Gold: $189 a month plus HST, $213.57 on the card. Twelve equal payments, the same in February as in July, covering weekly lawn care from mid-April to mid-November and unlimited snow clearing from mid-November to mid-April. Nothing on this page is charged per visit. The three memberships are laid out side by side here, or send us your address and we'll come back with a real number the same day, Monday to Saturday.
Want this handled for you?
Every tip on this page is something we do for members every week, on schedule, in uniform, for one flat monthly payment. Tell us your address and we'll send a real number the same day, Monday to Saturday.
Green in summer. Clear in winter.