By Dale Flohaug

As I drove up and down the field spraying my 2,4-D, I always wished I had the capability to spot spray wild oats at the same time.

The spring of '93 I bought an 83 foot Summers pull behind sprayer with a 1,000 gallon tank. I decided to buy two injections from Agsco in Grand Forks, ND. We mounted a second pump on the sprayer and run my 2-Ds such as Express or Harmony Extra mixed in the 1,000 gallon tank, and injected the wild oat chemical in front of the 2nd pump and run it directly to the boom, so it would not circulate through the tank. But when I came unto the wild oat spot and flipped the switch, it took too long for the chemical to get out to the boom. I used it that way in '93 and tried to anticipate ahead of time where the wild oats were.

I had only limited roan on my hitch for the canisters of chemical, so when they went empty I didn't have any extra chemical. I would then have to call bane for a pickup to deliver more chemical. I also had only one air tank so a full air tank had to be brought too. The sprayer had low profile tires which gave us trouble sinking in also.

By the end of '93 I knew I had to do something different to make the whole unit handier.

In the spring of '94 I traded for another 83 foot Summers pull behind sprayer with bigger diameter flotation tires. I took the mixing cone off the hitch to make roan for more canisters. I made mounting brackets farther back on the hitch for dual air tanks and mounted a second boon along side the other boom. Since they were not going to operate at the Same time, I could mount them very close to each other.

I decided to run straight water in my tank and I bought two more injections. So now I have 4 injections. Driving down the field

• one boom can spray Harmony Extra
• As I came to a wild oat spot, the second boom would be loaded with Harmony Extra and a wild oat spray such as Tiller.

As you know, Harmony Extra is a dry powder. We had to figure out a way to inject it since I do not want any chemical in my 1000 gallon water tank. We took a 15 gallon stainless steel canister and mounted an electric motor on the top of it with a propeller down into the tank. We bought a special on/off switch with a variable speed switch for the motor, so that we could aggressively mix the chemical at first, and slow it down to keep to keep the chemical suspended while I sprayed.

We have a special formula for mixing water, Harmony Extra, and household non-sudsy ammonia. Each gallon of the solution will spray 10.6 acres. I would mix enough to do 85 acres at a time, as this mixture is not recommended to be left over night.

The formula for 85 acres is:

• 7 and 1/4 gallons water
• A squirt of defoamer
• 58 oz household non-sudsy ammonia
• 28 oz Harmony Extra

This was at a rate of one third oz Harmony Extra per acre.

The non-sudsy household ammonia is used as a mild alkaline buffer to keep the Ph of the water in a neutral atmosphere. It also helps keep the dry flowable product suspended in the water. Ammonia increases the effectiveness of the products. Household ammonia is used rather than industrial because it is difficult to over dose with household ammonia.

I thought at first it might be a problem to switch from boom to boom in the field at 8 mph, but I was lucky. The #1 boom continued to spray until the #2 boom started to spray with absolutely no skip. Everything worked out fine. All this was done with one switch on my control panel with ease.

If I came to the end of the field and had a little strip left to spray, we had to engineer a way to spray with only half the sprayer. So we put in 1/2 rate injections to accommodate the problem.

You would assume that with four injectors there would be a lot of switches to run. We had simply an on/off switch to the boom I intended to have on, and one more switch to take it to my second boom as I cam to a wild oat spot in the field. The minimum of switches on each side of that switch were already preset to the number of injections I intended to have.

All in all, I am pleased with the operation of the unit.