Near Intersection of I-35 & I-90 Southern Mn. | Thanks for the many good comments and suggestions.
With the advent of Roundup crops, the spray situation has changed. It used to be that I needed to be careful when spraying my Roundup Soybeans so as not to cause a problem with my conventional corn or my neighbor's conventional corn and/or beans.
Now that I and most of my neighbors use Roundup Corn and Beans this is not much of a problem. Now the problem is the additional chemicals we now need such as Select to kill volunteer corn Rup Corn in Rup beans or the other chemicals to help out the Rup can cause problems with an adjoining crop.
This year, we added some Impact with the Corn spray for added kick. I noticed yesterday that where I oversprayed on a soybean field edge or corner, that the Impact was pretty tough on those beans. Surprisingly, it didn't seem to kill them but stunted them quite a bit (Maybe that's good?).
Anyway, I went ahead with my plan yesterday. That is put the AMS/Water/WeatherMax in the main tank and the diluted Select in the Injection tank. I called my dealer and they confirmed that since the SelectMax is an EC, mixing it with hard or soft water should be fine. Using AMS was not necessary and probably not a good idea.
I ran the Injection system with the output valve set to run the product back to the Injection tank for a couple of prime cycles. The Select seemed to mix nicely with the water. My ratio of 1:4 seemed to work fine. Less dilution would probably have worked fine also.
As Ron has stated the use of a Redball or equivalent in the injection line is a great idea. We always use them on every injection system we setup for spray (Not N-Serv). This concept is very simple and just has to work.
One needs to be aware that the ball will rise to a certain level based on product flow AND the density of the product.
For example, when I inject generic Rup at 32 ounces/acre and 7 MPH, the ball floats at a certain level. When I switch to Weathermax at 22 ounces/acre and 7 MPH, one might think that the ball would float lower. In fact it actually floats somewhat higher in the flow monitor, this is due to the difference between the two products.
Yesterday with my diluted Select and a rate of 24 ounces/acre and 7 MPH, the ball really didn't float at all but merely spun around in the bottom of the chamber. Since I could see it spinning I was confident that the product was being delivered properly. I really should switch balls if I plan on doing this alot.
I believe someone somewhere (maybe Ron) actually put a couple of Redballs in series. They used different balls in them for this type of situation. They just looked at the Redball that seemed appropriate for the product. The other Redball might be pegged at the top or bottom.
I have also used Ron's idea of not putting in the added chemical in the main tank until I have made a first pass next to the neighboring field. This worked well but had the slight drawback that the added chemical was then in the tank until it was emptied.
What I found yesterday was that I had a larger volunteer corn problem in some fields than I thought requiring me to run the Injection pump with the diluted Select on the majority of the field. I left the injection pump off for the first pass when it was next to a sensitive crop.
The volunteer corn was frustrating as we had some emergence problems in the actual corn fields this year but the volunteer corn in the soybeans seemed to grow just fine. The soybean planting was very conventional with a field cultivator pass followed by the planter and then a roller. Apparently the field cultivator and roller got the volunteer corn in a good position as even single odd kernels grew.
Edited by tedbear 6/25/2008 04:15
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Cutting "Select" for use in an Injection System
