If you briefly list the wishes of farmers when using plant protection products, they sound like this: kill the pests and leave all the pesticides near the pests on the field.
On the one hand, modern sprayers do their job better thanks to the efforts of the developers. But on the other hand, the more tubes, hoses, connectors and various adapters the car has, the more difficult it is to maintain. What are the tips for the most "intricate" places in the sprayer?
Hoses and tubes, this is the first candidate for fluid retention. Before starting work and especially when it is completed, check the slack of the hoses placed along the bar. After flushing the entire system, the liquid may remain in these places.
Use plastic hose clamps to reduce hose slack. This is an inexpensive and effective method of fixation, which is not afraid of chemicals and bad weather conditions.
End caps are real dead zones where the chemical can remain even after flushing the system. Know your technique and do not forget to check these places.
Filters sprayers. If there were crystals in the working fluid, then even after flushing the entire system with clean water, the sprayer filters will remain dirty. They need to be checked additionally.
A good example is 3 ml of dicamba is enough to make 3 thousand liters of water in the tank unsuitable for adding other pesticides. This shows how important it is to rinse the sprayer after work.
In order to ensure maximum cleaning of previously used chemicals, it is necessary to flush the liquid supply system with high quality. You will get the maximum effect if you first drain all the working solution and then pour clean water. Open all valves during fluid removal. Engage gravity - if possible, give the hoses a downward slope so that gravity helps the pump to remove fluid from the system. The pump is designed to pump liquid from the tank into the hose system - immediately after liquid leaves pump it becomes uncontrollable and if new portions do not flow from the pump, then liquid will linger in various bends and sags.
If the design of your sprayer involves the presence of rarely used items (tubes, hoses, mixers inside the tank), then you should remember them during each flush. Otherwise, chemicals from previous treatments may accumulate in them.
One of the advantages of the liquid form is the ability to mix several active substances in the tank at once. As it is easy to guess, if the formula is chosen incorrectly or you add components in the wrong order, the behavior of the mixture in the tank may be undesirable. For example, adding to the tank oil, ammonium sulfate, atrazine and 2.4 D ether, you get a working mixture. But if atrazin is added after the ether, then you will float up in tank a curd-like mass that will emerge and will not dissolve. To solve such problems, special sets of test tubes and pipettes are being released today to check on small volumes the effects of mixing different components. First make sure that all these substances can be mixed in this sequence and only then add the entire dose to the sprayer tank.
Usually when working during the daytime, there is such a factor - the upward movement of air from the soil heated by the sun. It can delay the movement of small drops and even lead to their evaporation, preventing them from reaching the surface of the leaf. But sometimes in the field there is a situation of temperature inversion, which can be detected by such signs as fog, the smell of burnt grass, although in the visible district no one burns anything. In such a frozen air to applicate herbicides is not recommended.
Typically, a spray computer adjusts the flow rate by varying the pressure in the hydraulic fluid supply system. Exceeding the recommended speed you force the equipment to increase the pressure in the system, which immediately leads to a decrease in the size of the droplets. The situation was described in more detail in the article «What is better - to reduce the concentration of the solution or the rate of outflow?».
The smaller the drops, the more volatile they are and, therefore, they are more susceptible to evaporation and wind drift. The faster the sprayer moves, the greater the turbulence of the air masses behind the rods and the tank. Therefore, it is not recommended to reduce the rate of less than 200l/ha and move across the field faster than 18 km/h.
For some drugs, the required amount of dilution is clearly indicated and cannot be broken. Therefore, before choosing the speed of movement and the calculation of the volume of liquid for herbicide, which you bought, do not forget to read the manufacturer's recommendations. In this case, you will most likely get the expected processing result.
