Tips for best early herbicide application results

Knight Farm Machinery offers its application tips to improve efficiency and protect herbicide investment.

As combinable crop farms prepare for autumn crop establishment, Knight Farm Machinery highlights the technology its sprayers offer to help operators ensure best results from both sprayer and herbicide investment, particularly on pre-emergence and early season spraying.

With full soil coverage the aim for pre-em application, low-drift nozzles are advised. Some application specialists suggest alternate forward and rearward-facing nozzles can help to achieve full coverage, especially on cloddy seedbeds.

Agronomists advise that pre-em herbicide applications are made as soon as possible after drilling, with the boom set at 50cm from the ground and the sprayer travelling at no more than 10–12kph, for maximum boom stability. Sprayer boom end protectors, if removed, should be refitted to ensure tips cannot touch the ground.

Isolating vehicle dynamic movement from the boom is critical to its stability. On Knight Trailblazer and self-propelled sprayers, the air suspension cushions against vehicle movement, while booms of 28m and under have a standard heavy-duty back-frame and a combination of spring, hydraulic and aeon blocks to cushion pitch, roll and yaw.

Tri-fold booms wider than 28m feature Knight’s unique 4D back-frame, with the usual pitch, roll and yaw compensation complemented by an additional pivot point taking care of vehicle lateral dynamics.

Knight mounted sprayers feature a cushioned vertical frame, while trailed and self-propelled models use pantograph arms which are cushioned using accumulators. Back-frame locking is standard to level the back-frame assembly, providing safe boom folding.

Boom height and levelling can be specified as manual operator controlled, DC1 – which is automatically-controlled boom height plus back-frame tilt giving synchronised left and right boom inclination – and DC2, with automatically-controlled boom height, independent left and right boom inclination, and plus/minus control of horizontal positioning.

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