These past two weeks, I have had the pleasure of working with one of the people that I think is one of the smartest guys in the Turf business, Jim Nedin. Jim is a consultant with our company and has background like no one else. On the first day we were working together, I had gotten a call at 6:30AM from a Superintendent who had just put new nozzles on his sprayer and really did not like the pattern he was seeing. As we went through all the obvious reasons it might be, we did not come up with a quick answer. These had been the same ones they had used for years. Well after one phone call and a few minutes Jim had the answer....(It was the nozzles being at the bottom of their range).
One of the best lines that I think Jim has in his sprayer calibration seminar is " You check you greens mower reels every morning, for as important as your sprayer is shouldn't you check that the same way?".
We have all heard the horror stories of an application that smoked a bunch of tees or someone who has to limp through the year with some fairways that are banged up because of a misapplication.
What is your process? How often do you recalibrate? How often do you do a catch test? Is it in writing anywhere? Have you had your local distributor do a winter service/calibration on your sprayer?
Always a great project for that next rainy day!
WJC
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