Would anyone be available for a brief chat to discuss vineyard pesticide and fertilizer spraying?
My brother is launching a company that can spray vineyards using a drone with electrostatic spraying technology, and I wanted to get a better sense what people are paying and how often you are spraying either pesticides or fertilizer.
Thanks,
Kevin
I could see that working well on row and field crops but not so much on vineyards. Spray penetration from mid to later season is already tough with air blast sprayers, and that’s blowing in from the side.
Thanks Casey! I’d love the chance to discuss further with you. Because the drone flies very low (four feet above the crops) and creates and electrostatic fog (basically the charge particles envelop whatever you spray), it should not have that problem of conventional blast spraying (but obviously I’d be interested in your thoughts).
So far they have successfully tested it on a few vineyards in PA.
I know the electrostatic thing, which has been around for years. Some vineyard guys I know use it on air blast spray rigs (don’t know what brand) and they rave about the results.
Kevin - If I recall conventional vineyard electrostatic spraying was/is pretty susceptible to wind drift because of the small droplets. In my experience I have not seen electrostatic spraying catch on for vineyard use in the northeast region. Truth be told I have not seen recent results of a vineyard electrostatic sprayer. By vineyard pesticide do you mean insecticide only or are you including fungicides? In my experience I use very little insecticide and only when insect pressure meets a particular threshold. For instance right now I have Japanese beetles, leaf hoppers, and grape berry moths in the vines. Birds tend to take care of the Japanese beetles, the leaf hoppers are causing very little damage at the moment so I monitor, and I measure the male grape berry moths(GBM) in two scent traps within the vineyard. There is enough GBM presence to spray selective unrestricted soft sprays that reach moth larvae and do not harm the area pollinators. Is this what you’re thinking?
