Purchasing New Spray Equipment

General Fruit Growing
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I’m looking for insights from those of you who have already been down the path of growing your orchard size and the necessary spraying equipment.

TLDR: Need a recommendation for tree-spray equipment.

My journey started about 5 years ago when I planted about 25 trees and began spraying them with a 4-gallon hand-pump spray tank. That worked for a while, but I got tired of mixing chemicals so many times and refilling the tank.

As the trees grew, I next purchased a tow-behind 26 gallon tank electric sprayer that produces about 3gpm at 120PSI with a spray gun. I also planted about 35 more trees, I know, it just keeps happening… This has been a great little sprayer, but now the trees have grown more (I keep them about 8 ft tall), and I end up having to mix about 3 tanks to complete each spray with full foliage. Maybe I’m getting lazy, but I’m now looking for the next solution. I’d like to get all the spraying done in one mix.

Considerations:

  • Need to spray about 60 8’ tall trees regularly. Row spacing is 14 feet.
  • Looking for at least 75 gallon tank for spray gun spraying. Air blast/mist could be 50-60 gallons.
  • Can use tractor 3-point to carry (<=1500lbs) and the PTO to drive a pump.
  • Low GPM requirement, but high PSI required for wand spraying to achieve good coverage. I understand the diaphragm pump is better suited than roller pump for high PSI / lower GPM.
  • In tank jet agitation is a must

Options I’m exploring:
A) 3-point 100 gallon spray tank with PTO driven diaphragm pump to get 300+ PSI. This would still require using a wand spray gun. The high PSI requirement rules out most roller pump spray tanks with low psi hoses/fittings/regulators. I’m looking at a Kings sprayer with a KAPPA 40 diaphragm pump. Kings Sprayers 100 Gallon 3-Point Hitch Sprayer with KAPPA-40 – Sprayer Depot

B) Mist Sprayer. I understand this style, and the airblast units use much less (50%?) chemicals to get the same or better coverage. This could provide quite the savings over time. These look interesting: 60-gallon A1 Mist Terminator. https://mistsprayers.com/product/terminator-2/

C) Airblast sprayer. This would have to be a used unit. I have found a few ~100-150 gallon units in the 5-8k range. I’m sure it would work great, but am concerned about overall versatility and all of the overspray.

I’m leaning toward the wand spray gun with PTO driven pump as it seems the most versatile. If mist/airblast spraying is really the way to go, and I’ll end up there eventually anyway, please convince me.

For those of you who have grown your hobby…. What recommendations can you share?

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I’m also interested in this topic. I’d like to see what others post, but my initial inexperienced thought is your gallons number sounds sky high. Do 60 8’ tall trees need 100 gallons, or even 50?. And I’m asking for my own sanity - I have about 100 8’ trellised dwarfs and I fill up the 4 gallon backpack twice.

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Great question, and thanks for asking, as I would also like feedback on the amount of spray actually necessary. It’s good to test our assumptions and pivot to better methods if possible.

I spray until the mixture runs off the leaves, and usually spray from 3 equidistant positions around each tree. I have consistently found that it takes around 50 gallons to manually spray 60 trees when fully leafed out. This is just under 1 gallon per tree. Perhaps I am overspraying, and I would also like to hear feedback from others.

I expect the trees to grow further, and spray tanks usually come in increments of 50 gallons. Poly tanks are light, so upsizing here seems prudent for future capacity. In any case, I’d like a more powerful sprayer, capable of getting the spraying done in one mix with some capacity for more trees down the road.

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I’m spraying 750 apple/pear trees with a 100 gal Kings sprayer with about 350 gals over 7 acres. Your application rate seems excessive to me, but many of my trees are still small. I spray from two sides.

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I also think @RickB ’s application rate seems high.

Last year I had about 40 bearing age apple, pear, and Asian pear trees between 15’ and 30’ tall and 5 LARGE peach trees.

When I sprayed all of them (while they were fully leafed out) I used 75gal. Eight foot trees should be using much less. If you are able to spray a concentrate you can divide the amount by 3x,5x, or 10x.

I’m working with some pretty bad equipment and can’t fully get every tree, due to height, so maybe should be using a bit more- but I would think my trees are at least twice the spray volume of an 8 foot tree- especially if they are pruned better than mine!

All that said I am jealous of anyone with a tractor and the ability to buy a nice sprayer and will follow and live vicariously through you!

When I was starting this thread had the best advice for me:

And talks about all the pros and cons of different fancy sprayers as well as advice. And sadly it does still take me 3-4 hours to spray my trees. I really need a better system this year.

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I have 70 trees that are from 2 yo to 10 yo. Mainly in the 6-10 yo size. So about 12’ high and filling out the 15’ centers they are on. I planted an additional 120 this spring with 76 apples being on a tall spindle trellis which is 220’ long. For reference.

I have the 100 gallon King sprayer you have listed but I have the diaphragm pump and it is set up on a trailer. It is so easy to hook up to my RTV to tow it around. I love the unit. We had them at work before, so I was familiar with them.

It does all I need and very well. It agitates very well. I have a hand held spray gun plus a tall tree gun.

I mix at full agitation, drive to the field and cut the agitation, turn up the pressure and spray. I have 300’ of hose on a reel. I drag the hose around and spray moving two or three times. The handgun they supplied is adjustable and I can get a pretty fine spray and good coverage. I probably over spray, often to run off which isn’t needed.

I can spray all my trees in 45 minutes. I have two blocks of trees about 300 yards apart. There are also 4-5 big trees that I think the previous owner planted for deer. Some are pretty good apples. They take 15-20 gallons to spray due to height and size. I spray those last and finish the tank out on them.

I mix 100 gallons and always run out when I’m done. Maybe 80 gallons go on the production trees. If the wind is good I spray a very fine spray and it stretches the spray out if I need to in the future. I’ll be able to stretch out that 100 gallon tank for a few years. I’ll have 320 total trees after this spring but 135 on tall spindle trellis.

I may reduce my mix when spraying copper or early season with less leaves.

The 73 trees on the trellis takes maybe 4 gallons and about 2 minutes to spray. A big advantage in my eyes.

I thinks its a good set up. I use it to spray my pumpkins too.

I love it as a trailer. 3pt hitches are a pain to hook up by myself unless you have a dedicated tractor. I just unhook the hitch pin, lift the tougue and walk it in the shop. Really light.

The mist blowers you mention would be nice, but my tractor is open station and doesn’t have a cab. I’ve sprayed a lot with them, at work and we had 1000 gallon with a tower and a 400 gallon trailer type. Mist blowers can be tricky if windy and you can end up getting wet with your spray with a wrong turn or a wind gust. A big orchard with long runs you can plan better and adjust for the wind. A small plot has more turns ect. Depends on your lay out. At my place I’d want a cab unit. I’ve made turns before where I had to turn the wipers on. More than once. Cab should have postive air displacement and carbon filters. IMO

I used a 30 gallon 12v Northstar sprayer before the King Sprayer. No comparison.

I suggest you get a tank big enough so you only have to mix and clean one time for your acreage. Thats 30% of your time and the most likely time to have a accident handling full strength chemicals.

Good luck.

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To my mind, you are using far more spray than what should be needed for a relatively young orchard. Perhaps you do need more pressure to cover the trees to dripping more efficiently, but 120 psi should probably do that, although 120 may be a dubious number because even my rears estate sprayer quickly drops pressure once I pull the trigger of my spray gun. The pump is driven by a 4hp Honda motor. It’s much more than you should need, although the estate model only holds 25 gallons.

I can cover about 40 10 year old, healthy apple trees with 25 gallons of spray. They would have maybe a 15’ spread and pruned open enough to assure optimum light for the fruit. 3-4 year old trees take a fraction of that.

It takes me about 40 gallons to spray my 2 acres of mature orchard and small nursery trees. about half of each (in terms of space taken).

Spray guns are important as well and the hand pistols allow better control than ones made like short rifles.

For most members of this forum, I think the best sprayers out there are made by My 4 Sons, which until recently were only available directly from the company. Their prices are much better than the competition and so they far out perform other products in their price range. I don’t know if I should be glad or sad that now Amazon is carrying them- at least it probably means they are a surviving business. I hope they maintain their high performance.

You need something bigger, apparently, although you could consider creating a mixing can with a spigot so you could do a single mix with a smaller tank. Refilling is a lot less work than making new mixes if you are using several compounds.

Incidentally, I am responsible for spraying many acres of orchards of various sizes, including ones with a lot of ancient apple trees that are huge. I already know I use a fraction of the material of commercial companies using much more powerful sprayers, but after over 30 years in business I know that the amount of material I use is more than adequate. I wish I could find a company that does as reliable a job as me with a similar limited number of sprays… forget about their volume.

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This a very helpful information. Thank you for sharing.