Ten Tips for Spraying in the Wind

Choosing the right time to spray can be tricky. Our gut tells us that spraying when it’s windy is wrong.  The experts tell us that spraying when it’s calm is wrong. So when can you actually spray? I’ve always advised my clients to spray in some wind, because it has a few advantages. The main […]

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Fundamentals of Spray Drift

The year 1989 marked my first spray drift trial under the watchful eye of Dr. Raj Grover and John Maybank. We evaluated the performance of several spray shrouds, Flexi-Coil, AgShield, Brandt, and Rogers, and wanted to measure just how effective they were. But in my heart I wasn’t interested in drift. I wanted to study […]

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What’s the Relationship Between Vapour Drift and Inversions?

Drift symptoms can take a few weeks to be discovered, and to figure out the cause, people need to reconstruct the conditions during the application in question. Wind direction is the easiest. But when we consider factors like inversions, volatility, calm conditions, and others used to explain the movement of pesticides, it can quickly become […]

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Thermal Inversions for Sprayer Operators

The Earth’s Atmosphere. The illustration of the Earth is to scale, but the landscape is not. Our focus in on the Surface Boundary Layer.

In April 2014, NDSU extension published an excellent factsheet explaining what thermal inversions are, how to detect them and how they affect pesticide spray drift. That factsheet inspired this article. The Atmosphere The Earth is surrounded by a layer of air called the atmosphere. Think of it as a sheet of liquid percolating and flowing […]

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Pesticide Drift and Communication

Staged photo of a Yasi spraying water. Source unknown.

When it comes to information about mitigating pesticide drift, it’s plentiful and easily accessed. I have an archive of >30 articles written by Ontario Ministry of Agriculture staff spanning 1999 to present day. Many are on this website. In fact, there’s so much good information out there it feels like there’s nothing left to say. […]

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