Rears Pak Spray

Our aspirational sprayer is the one sold by Hans at H&W Equpment for Vineyard and Winery, a 2 Row LIPCO Recycling Tunnel Sprayer.

There are many advantages of the 2 row LIPCO sprayer, and for us one huge disadvantage. First the advantages:

• It conserves the amount of spray being used
• It will do two rows at once
• It has little drift and directs the spray onto the vines
• It is not as noisy as a fan spray

The one huge disadvantage for us, at the moment is that the LIPCO sprayer is an order of magnitude more expensive than what we can afford.

In the beginning, we began by using Birchmeier backpack sprayers. My husband bought one and we took turns using it and then decided that two would be better and faster for covering the entire vineyard. The price is approximately $300.00 for the sprayer and it can hold 4 gallons of spray. An aside: 1 gallon of liquid is approximately 8 pounds therefore, to carry a full backpack with 4 gallons is carrying 32 pounds! Let's just say that 32 pounds is a little bit too heavy for me. When using any spraying equipment, we wear our Personal Protection Equipment (PPE), glasses, appropriate gloves, and mask. Having embraced the need to spray fungicides, we have graduated from the Birchmeier to a PAK Tank boom sprayer. In early June, Doug, from Oesco, Inc. delivered the sprayer we ordered and gave us detailed instructions on how to hook it up to our tractor and how to adjust the spray nozzle.

We have used the sprayer twice now and it is a real time and energy saver. The vines that managed to grow after the 2013-2014 growing season, that constitutes our big learning opportunity are faring very well. I need to do a count of our plants soon, but the hardy vines were mainly Chenin blanc. We feel that there may be a difference in our soil, especially the soil pH that has lead to a rather Gausiann like distribution of survivors in our vineyard as we look at our vineyard rows from south to north. We plan to take some soil samples and have them analyzed. In the mean time, there are more rocks to pick, weeds to wack, lineposts to pound, and bug patrol to do.