A couple of questions on lawns and trees...
 

Do any of you use a lawn care service (Scotts, Tru Green, etc.) to come out and fertilizer your lawn. I believe they come out 5 times from late Spring to late Fall and take care of all of the fertilizer needs. I think it will end up costing $175--200.

On another note...I have an apple tree that had a ton of apples last year. I have heard that apple trees are on a 2-year cycle. One year with apples, the next year without. Does anyone know?

I do it myself. I have a little thingy that holds the fertilizer, and I spin a crank and it gets flinged all over.

I do pay an autistic neighbor $10 to mow my lawn. Haven't figured out how to fire him yet without offending his family. :)

I use a serice from a local company, its about $35 per treatment for fertilization and weed treatment (bermuda grass). I signed up for the 3-times-a-year plan so its just over a hunn'rd bucks a year (including prepayment discount). The other two treatments are just summer fertilizer that I can do myself with a spreader. Its the weed treatment that is a hassle with mixing chemicals, etc, I decided it was too much of a hassle and risk handling various poisons. FWIW, just this year the company became a Tru-Green franchise.

My neighbor uses a different company (Atlas) and they did something to his lawn last week that turned it yellow. Too bad for them their little yard sign is still in his lawn naming the culprit.

Like others, I do the lawn thing myself.

As for the apple tree, I have two and they produce a lot of apples each year. Not sure why. The apricot tree is an every other year thing.

One thing you can do to limit apples is to literally yank off the blossoms as soon as you see them. If the blossoms aren't pollinated, the fruit will not be as plentiful.

i dunno why, but that seems kinda lazy, why do it in such a half assed way? Aren't there pre-mixed things from Scotts/etc with weed treatments?

Have you done it? I mean the right way with the proper chemicals for the weeds? There are different chems for different weeds and different times of the year: pre-emergent, broadleaf weeds, etc. You take the concentrates and mix them in a sprayer and walk around spraying it on the grass without getting any on your clothes or skin (right). Once I was pumping up the sprayer and didn't have it properly sealed and had some of the stuff squirt out... luckily not in my face. Yeah, you can skip the liquids and buy a big ol' bag that says "weed and feed" but good luck getting it to work well for the problem weed of the month in your area. Scotts weed and feed is half-assed, if ask me. Anyway I tried all those methods, and for the weed treatment, as I said, the 35 bucks is worth it for me. I'll do the spreader thing with the fertilizer ... easy enough and I can do it when I actually want the grass to grow (e.g., not just before leaving on vacation nor when its growing fine with just mulch).

yeah, I've done it. The first time was kinda a pain, but after that I haven;t had any problems. You have to make sure you get a decent sprayer, not just a cheap walmart model.

I have done that a few times and I've never really had a problem though, I guess you just have to be able to follow the directions on the container. I guess that's why I think I can be a weather scientist, I'm good at following simple directions to achieve the desired result.
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How to roll a joint

my neighbor that cuts my lawn is not autistic but is not real bright either. I also have the hand held thingy that spits fertilizer. Takes me about 15 minutes to fertilize the whole lawn.

I wonder if you'll ever hit the big time and get to be on the Weather Channel. Maybe you can even get that fancy AMS seal of approval. It would be so cool for me to know someone famous like that.

On topic: We used Trugreen Chemlawn for three treatments last year and none of the weeds died. We had to fire them and find somebody else. I don't recommend doing it yourself because of the toxicity, but on the other hand we've had neighbors that pull it off very well on their own.