General Questions
That varies depending upon which services you are using. We spray for mosquito every 2 to 3 weeks, depending on your preference. We fertilize 5 times a year on average, although that may vary with the needs of your yard. And scoop poop weekly, although we will come twice a week upon request. If you've subscribed to multiple services, we may combine certain services into a single visit.
Our hours of service are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday.
We have a saying at BYC: “We don’t hire people we wouldn’t send to our grandma’s house.” Every member of our team undergoes a thorough evaluation process, including a detailed background check and on-the-job training. Nothing is more important to us than knowing you can trust our team members.
We’ll text you the day before to remind you of your upcoming service, and we’ll send a text when we’re on our way so we don’t arrive unexpectedly!
No! As long as you remember to put your dog inside and your backyard is accessible (i.e. the gate is left unlocked), there is no need to be home while we visit your house.
Out of concern for the safety of both your pets and our team. Your dog might not love having a stranger in their space, and that’s ok! We also do not risk the possibility of your dog getting out while we are entering or exiting your yard, which is why we always double check the gate is shut before leaving.
We’ll do our best to return later that week.
Some of our services, like poop scooping, can be done rain or shine. Others, like mosquito control, aren’t best performed while it rains. Either way, if the weather is too severe to service your home, we’ll be back as soon as possible, even if that means coming on the weekend.
While we’ll be sad to see you go, you can cancel at any time. Just send us an email at customers@backyardcare.com and we'll cancel your service effective the day of your next expected payment. We cannot accept cancellations over the phone and do not provide refunds or prorations mid-month.
We bill monthly in advance of the following month's services. Your first charge will be at checkout or booking of your initial service. Subsequent charges will occur on or about the same day in subsequent months. We require a valid form of payment be kept on file for billing. We accept payment via ACH, credit and debit card, and mobile wallets such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, Link and Cash App. We do not accept checks or cash. Stripe serves as our payment processor for all forms of payment.
Billing varies depending on the service. Poop scooping is a year-round service, and therefore is billed year-round. Our mosquito control season is February through November. Fertilization is billed in four quarterly payments, giving us the flexibility to service your property when the weather and season is most appropriate, regardless of the month.
Yes, The Backyard Care Company is fully licensed and insured to protect you, your family, your property, and our team.
Mosquito Control
Our mosquito control program acomplishes two objectives: Killing adult mosquitos and stopping them from reproducing. We do this by applying our kid, pet and bee-friendly barrier treatment to shrubs and other roosting areas, and installing backyard-safe mosquito traps that attract egg-laying mosquitos and stop their larvae from reaching adulthood.
We use a highly effective natural mosquito control solution that includes ingredients such as lemongrass oil, geraniol and castor oil. These target mosquitos, killing them upon contact and repelling them for weeks after application.
What do we mean by effective? Our solution has a 100% knockdown rate just four hours after application. In other words, it kills 100% of the mosquitoes it comes in contact with. This is a better rate than the most commonly used chemical pesticides, which are highly toxic to fish, other aquatic life, bees and other beneficial insects.
Many natural solutions work... until it rains. And as we know, it rains pretty often here in the Southeast during mosquito season. We designed our mosquito control solution with this in mind. We combine our highly effective natural solution with inert synthetic components (i.e. non-toxic supporting ingredients) that dramatically increase how effective the solution is over time, even if it rains. In the case of torrential rainfall, we are happy to perform a complimentary re-treatment.
Our barrier spray solution is classified as a 25(b) exempt pesticide by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, meaning it’s deemed to be of minimal risk to human health or the environment. However, we still ask that you wait until the product is dry to enter your yard or other treated areas. That normally takes around 30 minutes.
Our mosquito traps are designed with children and pet safety in mind. They do not emit anything harmful, but as a general precaution we ask that you keep kids and pets from playing with or touching the stations.
Once our solution is dry, you are more than welcome to begin using your yard again. The solution usually dries within 30 minutes. Companies that use chemical pesticides require you to wait anywhere from 4 to 8 hours before returning to your yard.
We don't spray right before or during a storm. However, if it does rain before the solution has had time to dry, we’ll happily come back another day to retreat.
We call our barrier treatment “bee friendly” and not “bee safe” because if you sprayed a bee directly with the wet solution, it could harm the bee. However, we don't spray plants or areas where bees are active, and once dry our solution has been found to have little to no impact on local bee populations. Bees do not interact with the dried solution or take it back to their hive. Many common chemical pesticides are highly toxic to bees and can substantially hurt their populations.
Our trap program is also designed with bee safety in mind. Bees do not enter the trap and are not affected by its contents if they were to.
Our installed systems are bee-safe. Bees may avoid the area when the system is turned on, but they won't be harmed.
Many mosquitoes, such as the invasive and highly aggressive Asian tiger mosquito, lay eggs in artificial containers such as tires and buckets. Our mosquito traps are designed to attract female mosquitos by providing the perfect breeding environment for them. However, biological larvicide within the trap prevents any eggs laid in the trap from reaching maturity, helping to control the mosquito population in your area.
The traps are designed with the safety of kids, pets and bees in mind. The active ingredient is not toxic to mammals. Bees do not enter the trap, and even if they did, they would not be impacted by the larvicide as they do not lay eggs in standing water.
No! We charge a flat monthly fee for our traps service. We want getting your trap program started to be as simple and affordable as possible.
That depends on how big your property is. We always suggest a household have at least 2 traps on the property, but we’ll make an exact recommendation based on the size of your home and how much outdoor space you are hoping to protect.
Yes, for the cost of a single extra service, we’re more than happy to stop by, spray for mosquitos, and help ensure your event is a success.
We also offer a flea & tick control program and a lawn and ornamental pest service. Feel free to email us at customer@backyardcare.com if you are interested in adding either to your service plan.
Lawn & Garden
Our regenerative fertilization program inoculates, nourishes, strengthens, and protects your entire property: Not just your lawn but gardens, ornamentals and trees as well. This program, customized for your property based on the results of a soil test, ensures that you’ll have beautiful lawns and thriving plant life supported by nutrient-rich soil.
Our program uses a combination of organic fertilizers, humates, biochar, lime, and microbiological amendments. Each of the plays a unique role in restoring and strengthening the quality of your soil, ensuring vital plant nutrients are retained and available to your lawns and gardens.
It means we are restoring the health of your soil so it sustains thriving plant life without the need for constant chemical treatment. A regenerative lawn care program will help your yard retain water more effectively, drain more efficiently, and stay weed-free without the endless application of chemical fertilizers and herbicides.
Our whole approach is based on the science of the soil food web. Your soil is an ecosystem like any other: it requires a number of organisms working in harmony for it to thrive. We’re both populating the micro-organisms that make soil rich and healthy, and giving them the food they need to thrive. This in turn creates the conditions for your grass to absorb water more efficiently, drain more quickly, and combat weeds and other lawn pests more effectively.
Chemical fertilizers will turn your lawn green. They will also leach chemicals into the water table, kill the microbial life that keeps plants healthy, prevent effective drainage when it rains, and — most importantly to the companies that provide it — ensure that you need endless applications of chemical fertilizer to maintain your lawn.
Regenerative fertilization turns your lawn into a healthy, self-sustaining ecosystem.
Think of it like this: if you have high blood pressure, you can take blood pressure medicine, but that doesn’t make you healthy. You could also eat healthier, work out more, and make other lifestyle changes that improve your overall health and well being. Chemical fertilizers are blood pressure medicine for your yard: they turn your grass green, but that doesn’t mean your lawn is healthy. Our program is the lifestyle change your lawn has been asking for.
Our fertilization program is not just equal to but in many ways more effective than chemical fertilization programs. You will experience a quick "green up" of your lawn, but there will also be numerous benefits, including increased water retention, better drainage, and more nutrient availability, that conventional programs simply cannot provide.
However, our fertilization program is more expensive than some chemical programs. The high quality materials we use are more expensive to purchase. But unlike a conventional program, we will save you money in other ways. Consider the fact that, after one full year of our fertilization program, you'll be able to reduce your watering by as much as half, saving you substantial money during hot summer months. We have seen customers whose water bills have been cut in half because of our program.
There is no risk that our fertilization regimen will burn your yard. That’s yet another benefit of our regenerative approach. Oppositely, the risk that a chemical fertilizer could burn your yard if left out dry in the hot sun is real.
Our organic fertilizer has a single synthetic component, a covalent carbon bond that serves as a food source for the highly beneficial microbial life in the soil. The product has no risk of burning and, unlike salt-heavy traditional chemical fertilizers, strengthens rather than erodes soil health. If it weren’t approved and supplied by the certified organic producers we know and trust, we wouldn’t use it.
Backyard Care offers a coreless aeration program that complements and accelerates the results of our fertilization program. This involves the heavy application of microbiological soil amendments to reintroduce the conditions necessary for healthy bacteria, fungi, nematodes, earthworms and other soil life that naturally aerates land to thrive. Does anyone aerate the forest floor? No, and the conditions we are going to create in your soil are the reason why.
Poop Scooping
Our primary offering visits your home once a week to scoop poop and treat brown spots.
AWe’re more than happy to come by twice. And you get a 20% discount on the second scoop.
Yes, we do. Dogs often have areas they return regularly to do their business and that can have negative effects on the grass. Our natural brown spot solution helps revive the grass, strengthen the soil, and prevent pet waste from damaging the grass in the future.
We’ll dispose of it in your trash bin, if it’s accessible. Otherwise we’ll haul it away and dispose of it offsite. We are working on a pet waste composting program. However, it’s important that pet waste be composted in a safe and legal manner so we are not rushing the process of setting up that program.