Nick, You are correct. To maintain your target gallon per acre application of water you need to consider adjustments to your travel-ground speed, gallon per minute (GPM) flow rate from the nozzle tips and the tree-row width. Changing your pressure will impact your droplet size and not do too much to flow rates, i.e., it takes a four-fold increase in pressure to double nozzle GPM.
I have been working with other growers in Minnesota and Wisconsin on calibration. I commonly find calibration to be significantly off where we have variable tree size and row spacing. In 2012 we calibrated 30 different scenarios on 12 sprayers and found over application by 52% and under application by 20% to be very common. The Raven systems are very nice, especially if you have an AgTec. However you still need to make sure your travel speed is calibrated. If your using a high-pressure sprayer, the individual nozzle output should be within 5% of the manufactures specified GPM at a specified pressure. There will be an IPM field day in northeast Iowa on June 20 where we will be addressing calibration. I can send you more information, on this if you like. I can also come out to your orchard and help you with this. Thanks, Peter ============================= Peter Werts Project Coordinator Specialty Crop IPM IPM Institute of North America, Inc. 4510 Regent St. Madison WI 53705 Office: 608 232-1410 Cell: 612 518-0319 Fax: 608 232-1440 pwe...@ipminstitute.org www.ipminstitute.org On Jun 5, 2014, at 12:47 AM, Nick Lucking <n...@cannonvalleyorchard.com> wrote: Hi everyone, Just curious as to how you guys with larger orchards spray blocks in your orchards when some might be high density and others free standing. Do you do a couple of calibrations with different gear/pressure settings or just do all of one style block at a time? Cheers, Nick Lucking Cannon Valley Orchard Cannon Falls, MN _______________________________________________ apple-crop mailing list apple-crop@virtualorchard.net http://virtualorchard.net/mailman/listinfo/apple-crop
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