Three Tips For Managing Spray Drift

by

Poor spring weather inevitably leads to rushed planting and shorter spray windows.

Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Food application technology specialist Jason Deveau says there are three keys to minimizing drift and getting the best return on your spraying dollar.

In this video, Deveau and summer research student Tara Wiederman set up a spray trial to show RealAgriculture‘s Bernard Tobin what factors impact drift and what you need to consider before heading to the field.

The first tip is drop the sprayer boom as low as possible. Tip number two is go with a larger droplet size. “And if it’s really blowing there’s no point to spraying,” says Deveau. “You are just going to cause drift and your coverage is going to suffer.”

Related: Spray Tips with Tom Wolf — Ep. 5: Selecting the Right Boom Height for Each Sprayer

Deveau also says it’s important for growers to do the math when calculating wind speed: “Remember, the nozzle will experience apparent wind speed. That means if you are driving into a wind, you have to add the wind to your travel speed. You may be thinking you would never spray in 15 kilometre per hour winds, but that’s the case when you are driving 10 kilometres an hour into a five kilometre wind.”

Wake up with RealAgriculture

Subscribe to our daily newsletters to keep you up-to-date with our latest coverage every morning.

Wake up with RealAgriculture

 

Register for a RealAgriculture account to manage your Shortcut menu instead of the default.

Register