Farmer uses a pull-type to apply fungicides in canola

I'm really enjoying the feedback from Grainews readers on the topic of using pull-type sprayers for mid and late season applications. In this month's Grainews, I had an article on page 3 about Robert Hall's sprayer. Robert uses his sprayer to apply fungicide on cereals, but he had not yet tried canola. This inspired Bill Hodgson from Hartney, Man., to send me a few photos of his unit in a field of canola. He has been using a pull-type sprayer to apply fungicide on canola for the past six years.

The sprayer is a SprayAir with a 120-foot boom. Bill pulls it with a Cat on 18-inch tracks in line with the sprayer wheels.

He actually wasn't going to do any fungicide spraying this year, but then it rained half an inch last week, "and so I sprayed everything." He put Headline on his peas, Tilt on his oats, and Lance on his canola. And he did it all with his pull-type sprayer.

This is the first year he has pulled the sprayer with a tracked tractor. "Trampling while turning is no worse than with a wheeled tractor," he says.