Sprayer rental

Donna wanted to spray herbicide on part of her field to kill the grass so she can till the soil and replant with new grass and alfalfa.  I still have a bad area of yarrow in my middle pasture.  So Tuesday we rented a herbicide sprayer from the county's weed department.

We got to the county's weed department shortly after it opened at 8 am.  We were third in line to get one of the four 100 gallon sprayers.   We wanted to spray as soon as we could in the morning after the dew lifted as the past few afternoon have been fairly windy and wind was forecast again Tuesday afternoon.

First I sprayed my pasture section with Milestone herbicide.  The sprayer was calibrated to spray at a rate of 20 gallons per acre.  Yarrow needs 7 fluid ounces of Milestone herbicide.  A quart of Milestone is 32 ounces.  20 gallons into 100 gallons is 5.  7 times 5 is 35.  32 is about 35. [Lots of math.]  So a quart of Milestone was poured into about 99 gallons.  (I had sprayed out 1 gallon of water to test the sprayer before adding the herbicide.)

It doesn't take long to spray 5 acres as one is supposed to drive from 5 to 6 mph when spraying.

Donna had about 5 acres she wanted sprayed as she wasn't planning on re-doing all of her pasture at this time.  She used a different herbicide.  A 2.5 gallon container was used for 100 gallons of water.

After spraying the herbicide we rinsed the tank three times to get rid of the residue before returning the sprayer to the County.   The wind started blowing strong while I was rinsing the tank so we finished spraying just in time.