Spraying

[Eric_Phillips]

After doing my first spray job I am curious how you know where you need to be after the first pass? I was spraying about 2 acres with roundup and I know I over lapped each pass more than I had too but I wanted to error on the too much coverage than too little. I know you guys that do this for a living can't afford the waste. I was using a 12ft boom, how do you do it with those 30-40 foot booms?

Just curious,
Eric

 

[beenthere]

With the bigger booms they drop soap suds along the way at the boom tip to keep track of the sprayer limits.

 

[steveinmo]

Eric,

I've never done any spraying (yet) but it seems like a read a thread here not too long ago about some type of dye that can be added for this purpose. Maybe a search would turn up the post.

Steve

 

[Bowhunter]

One option is to use the dye mentioned. It can be found at TSC and other farm & fleets.

What I do is gauge off of my tire tracks. I know how wide my boom will spray and I use that to determine how far I should be from the last set of tracks.

 

[Eric_Phillips]

I was doing the tire track method but it is still just an eye ball calculation to how far over to be. My other problem was being able to see the tire track sometimes. The dye and soap suds sounds good.

Eric

 

[bdog]

Some people use foam markers(soap suds) but the real pros use GPS.

 

[unreconstructed]

I have only used the marker dye in back pack sprayers. It works well, but can be really messy. Is also fairly expensive.
About 35 bucks a gallon-I have seen 5 gallon containers but never priced it.

 

[rdbrumfield]

I have to share a funny with you about dye. A friend of mine had his barn arsoned. Just below in the old milking shed he kept his chemicals including several gallons of blue dye. Well the fire got to the shed and melted all the buckets with the dye going down to the pig pen. Well, you can see the picture, twenty or so smurf pigs with pink eyes and noses. They were just ready for the butcher, the health department came out and said not for 6mo.

 

[Farmwithjunk]

I'm paying $19 a quart for blue dye that colors 120 gallons of tank mix.