With the first day of Spring upon us and the weather trying to keep us out of the great outdoors, this weekend thousands of camping and caravan sites will open their doors to welcome those brave enough to get out and experience some much welcome fresh air after the very long winter.
Local Authorities permit camping and caravan sites to set up with minimal planning permission on the understanding that they will only open March to October. To be honest the demand for caravanning and camping reduces once it gets colder and water systems in shower and toilet blocks get drained down much like golf course irrigation systems to coincide with the arrival of night time frosts.
There is a lot of competition amongst the caravanning and camping marketplace but the industry is going through big growth as demand for stay at home holidays increases. There is a lot you can do in the British countryside. There is also a lot you can do to get your caravanning and camp site ready for spring and welcoming previous clients and attract new ones to your site.
Weeds indicate a poorly kept site. As do untrimmed hedges, poor pathways and pitches and poor quality grass too. With a little foresight and planning, you can have a great area of green sward that will be appealing to short and long term visitors and keep them coming back. If they want to park or camp in mud they go to Glastonbury or Isle of Wight music festivals.
A ten point plan to improve your camping and caravanning site:
Kill weeds by making tidy applications to hard standing pitches, hedge lines, obstacles like wooden posts and lamp posts and also around building lines. Apply a residual weed killer as a blanket spray in the winter and very early spring to save time in the growing season. They work really well and can be done when the site is closed to the public when you have a little more time.
Your grass areas should only have grass in them. Not moss or weeds or worm casts or bare areas. Kill off what should not be in the grass in the autumn with a selective weed killer as soon as the site closes. Kill the Moss with soluble iron and replace with new grass.
Over seed with new grass seed all grass areas so that they are ready for the spring. During the growing season, if you can rest pitches, rest them for a while but also over seed bare areas on the corners of hard standing pitches and where ground sheets have damaged the grass through not being lifted to let the grass breathe.
Make sure that the grass is mown weekly and at a sensible height to cope with wear. Shorter grass may sound like you do not need to mow it weekly but it also wears out quicker. Keep your grass about 19 – 25mm and make sure you collect the clippings.
Fertilise your lawn with a slow release granular or liquid fertiliser at least three times a year to keep it disease free, healthy, green, more resistant to wear, dense, fewer bare areas and more importantly visually pleasing to all.
Make repairs with turf in the autumn or grass seed if the ground is still warm of any bare areas.
Washing up Areas should have proper drainage as water flowing around the station will only generate mud.
Make sure that your hedges leading to and from your site and around your site are nicely trimmed. Owning a retro T2 VW Campervan, I am tired of a stray bramble scraping down my paintwork no matter how careful my driving is as access is so tight.
Everyone hates dog poo and making provision for dog exercise areas is so important. Dogs love camping and campervans and I have two that do. Why is it that you always so weeds and weed grasses growing up the fence line of dog exercise areas. The fence cost you a lot of time and effort and cost to erect so why not weed kill around the edges of it at the base to about 10 cm each side of the fence to stop the weeds damaging the fence line. Saves time consuming strimming and it will all last longer too.
Do anything that you can to minimise strimming. Spray a neat tree ring with a weed killer to keep the base of the tree weed free. It’s a good weed management practice that will allow the trees or saplings to get maximum water and not struggle or compete. You can spray a Glyphosate translocated weed control product against bark without damage to the tree stock.If you need Lawn Treatment Products why not visit The Lawn Shop
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