Spraying

I have been planning to spray the hayfield to kill the grass and alfalfa in preparation to plowing it under.  I planned on doing the spraying this weekend.  However rain came into the forecast for this weekend and I moved my spraying to today as the forecast was for calm winds.  However a minor cold front passed through last night and the winds started around 11 pm and continued into this morning.  Instead of renting the sprayer from the County at 8 am I waited until mid morning.  It was still was a little breezy but I felt the wind would die down by evening.  The wind let up around 3 pm and was calm by 5 pm.

To spray the hayfield I used GlyStar Plus herbicide. It costs $50 per 2.5 gallon container.

The amount of herbicide to spray is complicated.  The sprayer is calibrated to spray 20 gallons of water and herbicide per acre when driving 3.5 miles per hour.  Then a person figures out what weeds (and/or grass) they are trying to kill as that influences how much herbicide per acre to use.   Add in the size of the sprayer tank, in this case 100 gallons.  The store thought I needed to mix three quarts of GlyStar Pro per acre. 

If the sprayer sprays 20 gallons per acre and is 100 gallons that means I cover 5 acres per tank.  So that means 15 quarts per tank.  Or 3.75 gallons.

I read the herbicide booklet and they thought I would need one to two quarts of herbicide per acre based on how tall the alfalfa was.  My alfalfa is short.  At two quarts per acre that would be ten quarts per 100 gallon tank.

So I used 2 quarts of herbicide per acre.  This was partly based on the container size: 2.5 gallons (or 10 quarts).

I hope it is enough herbicide to kill the grass and alfalfa, especially the alfalfa.

Now I was told by several government agencies my hayfield was estimated to be around 15 acres.  That would mean 3 tanks of herbicide.  I used four tanks of herbicide so maybe the other estimate of 19 acres is more accurate.  So it was good that I used less herbicide per acre, else I would have run out of herbicide.

I also sprayed part of the north pasture and part of Calvin's pasture.  For that I used Milestone herbicide.  That cost me $110 per quart container.

For Milestone I had to again to calculate the complicated amount of herbicide to use.  Since Milestone came in a quart container I also had to convert a milliliter amount (from a table in the herbicide booklet)  into ounces.  I had three main weeds each which had their amount to use.  I had a range - depending on which weed - from under a quart to a few ounces over a quart in a 100 gallon tank calibrated at 20 gallon per acre.  So I used the entire quart in my tank.  As I had mentioned, that allowed me to spray part of my north pasture away from the trees and maybe two thirds of Calvin's top pasture which has the most weeds.


The horse rescue ranch has lots of weeds in their field and my neighbors are none too happy about that.  So I spoke with the owner and offered to spray their field if she bought the herbicide.  She was open to this as she said they planned on spraying the field.  However she changed her mind this evening, I believe after she got an estimate of the herbicide cost.  She says they plan to spray next week.

My other neighbor to the south was open to me spraying their field.  They already got the herbicide and I planned to spray their field this evening.  However their herbicide - Opensight - comes in a solid granular form instead of a liquid form.  A solid ounce is different from a liquid ounce.  The measuring cup we had was for liquid ounces. By the time we came to an estimate of how much to fill our container sunset was near.

Since I had picked up the sprayer late I negotiated a late return tomorrow.  Unless the morning is too windy I should be able to spray tomorrow.  It has to be in the morning as I forgot until later that I had two appointments in the afternoon and will be busy then until 5 pm.


The herbicide can either be sprayed from the hose for spot spraying or using the bar at the end of the pickup's tailgate.  The bar covers about 36 feet (I believe).  The sprayer is run by a little Honda gas engine.  The sprayer bar (left, center, right) are controlled by three switches in a box.  The box is run off the battery.  So I had a long cord that I ran into the pickup cab where I used the box.  From the box a small wire with jumper cable connectors run to the battery in the engine where  I hooked up each lead to the positive and negative on the battery.  All these cords made getting in and out of the cab tricky.