# Tips, pressures, and speed for spraying?



## ACDII (Oct 1, 2021)

I built a 60 gallon sprayer that fits in a lawn cart with a 12' boom. Been using it to spray Pasture Pro over the years. It is set up with XR TeeJet tips. I plan to spray Calcium AKA Liquid Lime this season and also my soil just needs N, the P & K are good. 

I set this thing up 15 or more years ago ad forgot all I knew about setting it up.

Recommended by the Seed store, is Hay-Liquid Now for the Nitrogen, and Cal Flow was recommended by others for the area I need to cover.

What I don't know are what tips to use and what pressure and speed to apply it with. 

The Cal Flow is "Commercial Spray Equipment: 1 gallon per 30 gallons of water (2 1/2 - 5 gallons per acre)" What I don't know is if this means 2 1/2 - 5 of the mix per acre, or of the product itself per acre, which would mean spraying 180 gallons or so per acre. On this one, would I use the brown tip, 60 PSI @ 6 MPH? It would flow 30 gallons per acre. 

Honestly my brain went to shit trying to figure out what I need on this.

The fertilizer is a bit easier, 6 quarts, 60 gallons, covers 3 acres. I think on this an Orange tip at 8MPH will suffice, but want to be sure I am on the right path. The Pasture Pro was set up 30 gallons per acre so the 8003 tip, 60 PSI @ 4MPH was the coverage I was giving it.

https://www.teejet.com/CMSImages/TEEJET/documents/catalogs/broadcast_nozzles.pdf Page 12


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## Hayjosh (Mar 24, 2016)

Based on what their website is saying, it looks like you need 2.5-6 gallon of the liquid lime itself per acre, but it must be diluted 1:30 in water so it can be sprayed. For backpack sprayers they say 1 gallon of diluted lime per 600 square feet. So therefore it would look like you need sprayable 180 gal/acre, to the cost of $77/acre (at the minimum application rate), which will last you about 3 months of buffering capacity.

That is a TERRIBLE deal.

One ton of Ag lime is $40 in my area (SW MI), and that lasts 5-7 years. My COOP has a buggy I can rent for $30 to spread the lime if they can't get their lime truck out here. In this scenario, you'd be spending about $40-ish/acre and that will subsist for years, as opposed to months for twice the cost. It will cost you $140/acre to lime just to get you through the season, and then you're starting over from scratch next year! It's a losing proposition.

If one needed pH correction fast, it might make sense to spread ag lime, and then treat with this to get results NOW, as Ag lime can take a couple years to start working into the soil and correcting pH.

If you're adding N, it is going to acidify the soil so it will be fighting to counteract the pH correction of the lime as well.


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## ACDII (Oct 1, 2021)

This is the info I was looking for. It sounds good in print, but once drilled down into the weeds, it isn't as good as it seems. Unfortunately around me there are no lime spreaders from teh FS, and there is a minimum 20 tons for delivery. I may go the bagged pelleted route instead, but will see if I can find a local farmer who is having lime spread as well. They usually do it this time of year and not in the fall when there is corn, though I do see it done after beans are harvested.


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## Hayjosh (Mar 24, 2016)

You might need upwards of 2000-2500 pounds of lime/acre depending on how low your pH is.


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## ACDII (Oct 1, 2021)

I am going to get some samples and do my own ph test to verify and find out where each sample that did get tested came from. It is 5.7 on one, and 6.1 on the other, but I sent in 4 samples. From what I read, max is 2 tons an acre.


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## Hayjosh (Mar 24, 2016)

How are you doing your owh pH test? Your method and materials will matter. The science behind pH is one thing widely talked about by many but actually understood by few.

You should be pooling your samples together to get a composite. The difference between 5.7 and 6.1 is not great WHEN accounting for the method variability, which can be +/-0.2 pH units. If it has 0.2 unit variability then both could be the same at pH 5.9.

Fun tip: pH scale is logarithmic so something at pH 5 is 10 times more acidic (10 times more H protons) than something at pH 6.


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## ACDII (Oct 1, 2021)

I went around the place and grabbed about a dozen cores, dried them and mixed it up into a big pile, and took a sample. The color was right between 6 and 6.5. The other tests did not come out at all, don't know if the chemicals are old or I just did them wrong, but the PH came out to about where the lab tests showed. 

Anyway I finally figured out the application rate based on the tips and pressures, but not the speed. I am rebuilding the sprayer with new controls and boom with new 110* tips instead of 80* for a wider pattern and better overlap. The one problem I always had was shutting the spray off, and that was with turning off the PTO, but it took a bit for the pressure to go down, so I looked for a single electric valve control, and what is out there is ~$300 for the panel and regulator but no valve, the valve is another $160. FleetFarm has a 3 valve kit for $449 complete with the control panel, regulator, 3 valves and the wiring. Perfect setup because I can now turn the agitator on and off from the cab as well as the boom and the 3rd valve will be for a wand sprayer. 

I built it on one of those garden carts with the axle in the middle as the dump point, but going to cut the mounts, move them to the rear and weld the tongue to the box at the front, put a little kick stand on it for parking it to prevent the filter from getting busted off, done that twice now. Picked up an ATV breakaway boom that will mount perfectly to the bed under the tank. It has a 140" spray width, which is right where I want it. I got about 16 years of use out of it so far, with the new controls and a little reworking, another 20 is possible.


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