spraying-gallons of water per acre

I use a mixture of Atrazine 4L and Stealth Herbicides on one acre of suger cane that I harvest for syrup. In the user manuals it states to use a minimum of 10 gallons of water per acre for the stealth and minimum of 20 gallons of water per acre for the atrazine 4L. I am now using a total of 38 gallons of water per acre. The question is "Would I get just as good or better grass and weed control if I started using 25 gallons per acre? What if I used 50 gallons per acre? Which would be best?

My guess is that you won't be able to see a difference. On a bunch of acres I would try and be close to the minimum just to make it easier and faster but on less than a sprayer full it wouldn't make much difference. Do what your doing now.

About 25 gallons should work and save you fill and travel times

Why won't 20 GPA work?

I can't see why not. I use 20 gpa with Atrazine and Prowl combo. The water's just a carrier. What matters is getting the right amount of product down.

if you are spraying pre emergence, no difference. spray volume really matters when you are trying to get complete leaf coverage.

Thanks for the help. I was thinking GPA wouldn't make a big differance but I wanted to check with someone in the know to be sure.

When spraying with minimum GPA of water, you will prolly have better results if you use a surfactant along with your product!
HTH, Dave

It would work fine, I didn't want to make him look too far off.

Some products, like roundup, work better if you use less water, close to the minimum recommended of 10 gallons.

Other products, like Liberty/Ignite (whatever they call it this year...) work better with over 20 gallons per acre.

It depends on how the product works, if it needs to coat the green plant, or if it needs to soak in to the plant and get taken down into the root. Every product is a little different.

I would use AMS and a surfactant with nearly any of these products, as per their labels. The AMS helps to soften the water, as well as help the plants grow a bit so as to take up the weed killer more. Some few products have a surfactant in them already, but benefit from more added depending on the temp and such. The different surfactants will either break down a waxy leaf coating, or allow the spray droplets to spread out and coat the leaf instead of make droplets that roll off. Depends on the spray type and weed leaf type as to which of the big three surfactant types is best for that day. We have crop oil, non ionic oil, and um, the even harsher one I forget now. Sometimes any of the 3 can work, you need to match up the weed size, air temp, and so forth to pick the right ones for the need of the day.

For ground applied products that don't need to coat a green plant, but work in the soil, it tends to be less fussy, so long as you get good coverage of the ground. No additives are typically needed. Generally one hopes for rain a few days after to put the spray down into the ground an inch or so so it works better.

Paul