Home Forums Miscellaneous Topics Rural Living need spraying advice

I'm about to embark on a new "thing." I need to kill off blackberries and queen anne's lace that are taking over my GF's hay field and part of the foresty-lawn area closer to the house. Probably total 8-9 acres. I've dribbled a little crossbow on some of it to make sure that's what I want to use. It's dead, very dead, satisfyingly dead.

So how do I know how much per acre to really use? How do I know how fast to travel with the tractor to apply that much?

How do I know where I've sprayed? Food coloring or something in the spray tank? Do I just paint the whole field orange, red, green, or whatever?

Any pointers for a noob would be appreciated.

You have a boom sprayer?

Using mine, I just look at my tracks to know where I've sprayed.

Fish pond dye works for a marking dye if you need it. Doesn't take much.

Yeah, boom and nozzle/stream. I'm picking it up tomorrow AM. I don't know if I'll get to use it this season, we got some rain but might have a break coming. (Then again, elk season is coming.) It might wait 'til spring.

Following my tracks might be the best option.

Fish pond dye? What is that for? I have been fighting a fish pond for over a year. My GF's ex husband planted cattails in their pond for bass cover. They took over. That $%^&* weed mat it built .. stuff reminds me of oakum. Now it's MY pond, my problem. I've got most of it now. It's taken 2 summers' worth of spare time. One patch left. Mostly I've been tearing it out a little at a time with a small grapple hook and a rope, occasionally using the tractor to pull it out when I get a bigger bite than I can pull. Anyway maybe I need fish pond dye anyway? Figure I need to buy a canoe so I can paddle out and re-install the nozzles on the fountains, right now they're just inch or inch and a quarter pipe sticking up.

I dunno, I'm just makin' this [bleep] up as I go. Keep a straight face and pretend I know what I'm doing.

Be sure to add some dish soap as a surfactent to make it wet better,

People dye their ponds to control algae and hinder fish predators.

That dye will mark your spray path as well.

I had one pond out back that was taken over and covered completely by cattails. I sprayed them with glyphosate and killed the hell out of them. They never came back.

The answer to your how much to use question is in the pesticide instruction booklet that lists the various things that it kills and the amount, usually in ounces per acre, to use.

You will need to calibrate the sprayer to get the right amount of chemical on the plant growth. There are a variety of sites that will tell you how to do it. It involves speed of the tractor or UTV, the amount of water the sprayer delivers at the speed you travel, and the amount of pesticide required per acre. Here is a link to a government site
https://www.nrcs.usda.gov/Internet/FSE_DOCUMENTS/nrcs142p2_035796.pdf

This makes simple work of spraying the correct amount of pesticide.

Better get gps and a raven rate controller...auto steer while you are at it...
Seriously...for you it will have to be a seat of the pants thing ..I have not used crossbow but read the label and see what kind of carryover it has. If you are go a plant somthing else..if it's a contact killer applying too much won't hurt too much...
What we used to do before rate controllers and gps...look at a chart and see what tip size and pressure to run with your given speed...we always figured aroun 6 mph..we always used more gal due to some overlap but you would be surprised how close it it...

I've sprayed a lot of Crossbow, and it will usually kill the snot out of stuff if applied correctly. I wouldn't think you would need Crossbow for use on Queen Anne's Lace, as Crossbow is more for woody plants. Plain old 2-4-D will probably work on the blackberries if you up the rate a little.

It's easy to calibrate a sprayer, you can find the information on the internet. Basically, you drive a specified distance, 200 feet I believe, at the speed you plan to run when spraying, and time yourself. Then with the sprayer sitting, run the sprayer at the RPM and pressure you plan to spray with, and catch the spray (do this using water before you mix in the chemicals) in a container, doing so for the same amount of time that it took you to drive the 200 feet. The number of ounces of spray you collect will pretty much be the number of gallons per acre you will be spraying.

I've done that numerous times, and it works good enough for me.

Actually just plain old mowing will do a great job. If you do it at least 3 times a season. I have about 20 acres in open field and had a guy with his cattle on it for years. He always put off mowing until about Nov and the place got run over with weeds and thistle. When he died the cattle left and I started just mowing the fields 3 times a year. Now they pretty much look like a large lawn especially with no animals on it. Of course the heavy rain we had this year really made a lot of junk undergrowth and with mowing I had to go from 4th or 5th gear down to about 3rd gear to get through it. I use a 7' sickle bar and don't even pick it up. I can mow more faster with the bar than the bush hog. Lots faster. I'm not moving faster, I'm just covering 7 full feet each pass as opposed to about maybe 4' with the hog. The new flail mowers are nice but expensive.

Mowing or shredding is a temporary solution to a permanent problem, in my opinion.

It does knock stuff down for awhile, and it looks good, as the grass can outgrow the brush/weeds you are trying to control.

But it's still there,... in most cases, waiting to be dealt with.

I hope my regular shredding clients keep calling though!