Welcome to Sprayers 101
Sprayers 101 is a non-profit resource describing best practices in safe, efficient and effective agricultural spraying. The site is based in Canada with content freely contributed by international authors. Browse our library of articles, videos, presentations, apps, calculators, tables and ePubs.
Our most recent articles:
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How Canadian Crop Protection Products are Assessed for Safety
As originally published by The Grower, August 2020. Pests such as insects, diseases, and weeds can affect our quality of life in many different ways. Pests can represent a threat to public health and the environment as well as create substantial negative impacts to the economy if they are not sufficiently managed. Crop protection products […]
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How to read a water quality test result
It’s common advice: Test your water before using it as a spray carrier. You dutifully sample the well or dugout and await lab results. And what comes back is a whole lot of numbers. How to make sense of it all? All three of these tests report a large number of properties and identify specific […]
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Adjuvants – A Primer
We can always count on receiving regular questions about tank mixes but in recent years we’re hearing more about adjuvants. Many pesticides are already formulated with a variety of adjuvants. Perhaps they are intended to improve shelf-stability, or mixing and/or product performance. A pesticide label may specify a particular name brand or generalize a category […]
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End of Spraying Season Checklist
It’s finally that time of year to put away the most-used piece of farm equipment, the sprayer. Winterizing is a necessary step, but also an opportunity to do a few extra things. Winterizing Before you do anything, walk around the sprayer and note any telltale signs of liquid leaks. Once washed, the helpful dusty surfaces […]
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Cleaning an airblast sprayer
Next to sprayer math, cleaning the sprayer is one of the more distasteful aspects of airblast spraying. It’s time-consuming, you never really know when you’re finished, and sprayer manufacturers and pesticide labels offer only limited guidance. Clean sprayer rinsate often looks and smells exactly like contaminated sprayer rinsate. When airblast sprayers are not cleaned as […]
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The Label Summary Sheet Proposal
In an earlier article we identified shortcomings in the content and design of today’s pesticide labels. From the perspective of the spray applicator, the information needed most often can be difficult to locate, anachronistic, contradictory, subjective or even missing from the label altogether. To truly encourage an applicator to read and follow the label we need a consistent, concise and clear format […]