Humility in the Face of History – The Vermorel Nozzle

It’s a rainy Friday in 2017 and I decided to deal with the articles, factsheets, manuals and other sprayer-related documents that have been piling up on my desk for a year. My filing strategy is based on some advice I got from Dr. Bernard Panneton (Application Tech Guru) back in 2009. He said to read […]

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The Misplay of our Generation

We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. –Amara’s Law of Computing We tend to overestimate the effect of a stewardship mistake in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run. –Wolf’s Adaptation of Amara’s Law to Agricultural Stewardship […]

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Plumbing Projects That Make Spraying Easier and Safer

Some of our biggest struggles in spraying involve the start and end of each spray day. When starting a new field after the sprayer is cleaned, we need to prime the boom. If it’s full of water, that water has to be purged and the question is always for how long and where to do […]

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Storing Pesticide Mix Overnight

JD 4940

Not being able to finish a tank due to weather or any other reason happens to just about everyone. Is it OK to simply leave the sprayer as is, and resume spraying later after some agitation? In many cases, the answer is yes. Most pesticide mixtures are stable in short term storage. On resuming spraying, an agitation […]

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Should Backpack Sprayers be Used to Test Airblast Products? – Part 2

In Part One of this article, we showed that approximately 40% of minor use label expansions and registrant submissions rely on data from hand booms and guns. We also showed that a hydraulic backpack or knapsack will not give the same coverage as an airblast sprayer, and we concluded by suggesting that small plot researchers use […]

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