Today, I fertilized my lawn with Vigoro weed and feed. I hope the weed control part of it works, because I have some dandelions and other weeds in some parts of the grass.

I injected quite a few tablespoons of iron into the ground around my sick maple, using my old watering “syringe” thing. I just dumped a tablespoon at a time into its little fertilizer receptacle. Hope I didn’t overdo it! The tree is already dropping a lot of leaves because it’s been weakened by chlorosis this year. I was planning to put some implants in the trunk to give it more iron in the spring, but now I wonder if that might be too much with all the iron I put into the soil.

I took out a sprinkler valve solenoid to see if replacing it would make that sprinkler valve turn off properly. It’s a valve that keeps on running when the next valve opens, causing it water too long in that area and waste water. Well, the sprinkler place was closed (Labor Day), so I tried something else. I removed another solenoid and swapped their places. This put the bad solenoid on a smaller group of sprinklers — one that wouldn’t waste as much water if it ran on too long. I confirmed that it was the solenoid causing the problem, because now the formerly bad valve is working great and the formerly good valve is sticking some. I’ll have to pick up a few solenoids, because I’ve also noticed another sprinkler valve (station #2) sticking.

Also, a few days ago, I sprayed the backyard rose hedge with Miracle Grow. I hope they start blooming more. They have been better this summer than last year. I think they were getting too much water before, and I need to adjust the sprinklers by them, because half of the hedge is getting more overspray than the other half, the wetter part is blooming less.