Lawn & Landscape Announces Recent Online Sweepstakes Winners

Lawn & Landscape today announced the winners of two recent lawn care-related Online Sweepstakes. Business owners Randy Secoy and Frank Vossos are winners of a LESCO spreader and a supply of Allectus herbicide from Bayer Environmental Science, respectively.

Secoy, owner of Secoy Lawn Care, Shade, Ohio, has been treating commercial sites since 1989 and says lawn care has been tough in his area this summer. “It’s just too dry to make any applications,” he says. “With the remnants of Hurricane Katrina, we’ve just had about an inch-and-a-half of rain, which is less than we were expecting, but it’s better than nothing.”

Rather than use his new LESCO spreader – his prize for entering the July Lawn & Landscape Online Sweepstakes – for fertilizer applications, Secoy says he plans to visit some of his accounts and neighboring farms in southern Ohio to apply granular grub control products. “I have some lawn care and maintenance accounts, but a lot of people around here don’t want to see fertilizer on their lawns,” he explains. “But the problem that they are having a lot now is with moles. If you have grubs in your lawns, moles will come after them and we’ve been seeing a lot more of them in farm country down here than we have in the past. By getting rid of the grubs, we’re hoping that will help control the moles, as well.”

Also getting ready to make granular applications, but on the weed control side is Frank Vossos, owner of A Cut Above Lawn Maintenance, Decatur, Ill. Selected as the winner of the June Online Sweepstakes, Vossos won a choice of either a case of Allectus SC or 10 bags of Allectus G insecticide from Bayer Environmental Science. Vossos says he’ll opt for the granular Allectus G version.

“I haven’t used Allectus in the past, but it will be nice to try something new,” says Vossos, who has been performing lawn maintenance for five years. “You start getting pests that become tolerant to certain products or you end up using several products instead of just one or two that will control all your problems, so this will be a good chance to find a new product that works in a number of situations.”

Vossos says lawn care and maintenance takes up about 50 percent of his time right now, while his “day job” as a gasoline tractor-trailer driver occupies the rest of his time. “I usually go to work at 3 a.m. and finish the day shift as a driver by noon or 1 p.m., and then from 1 to 7 p.m. I’m working on the lawn care business,” Vossos says. “I had picked up some maintenance equipment along the way and started getting requests from friends and family to help with their lawns and now we’re working on expanding the business.”

Currently working on the maintenance business with his two sons, Vossos says they’ve recently started doing some light landscaping and other property management services, such as power washing and gutter cleaning. “What I’m eventually looking to do is move away from my trucking job and get into maintenance full time,” he says, adding that entering the Lawn & Landscape Online Sweepstakes is one way to get started on his goal. “The worst that could happen is that I can enter and not win,” Vossos says. “But it only takes a few minutes of your time to fill out the form and – who knows? – you might end up with a new product to help you in your business.”