Spring can be a busy season on the farm. From fertilizers to pesticides and herbicides, staying aware is key to staying safe. That is also true when it comes to tank mixing.
According to Anthony Duttle with Rush and Duttle Consulting, “In the course of my career, I’ve had the opportunity to develop an extensive knowledge about fertilizer and adjuvants and pesticide formulations, and what happens is every one of those products changes the behavior of anything you put with it. When you go out and look at a tank mix combination of five different products, you have to dissect what the contribution of those five different products are to that mix, and when you look at that, you start piecing apart and you go, ‘Wow! Really, you put that in that tank mix? Were you aware of what this adjuvant was, especially if you combine these two other products together?’”
Duttle says that tank mixing can go from safe to dangerous in no time.
“Each one of those products modifies the activity of the other chemistry, and you modify those tank mixes and the products might be perfectly safe by themselves, but then it goes from 89° the day you write the recommendation to 105º and you’re out there applying that— you wouldn’t have burned it one day but you would the next,” he adds.
That is why those tank mixing recommendations should of course be current and thoroughly written before being signed.
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