It was a perfect day for dormant spraying - warm, cloudy, quiet day. I mixed my copper and dormant oil in one sprayer. At the end of first sprayer I noticed that liquid is somewhat thick and color changed from blue to the dirty yellow-brown. With next sprayer I added some soap, hopping to get more even result and decided to shake it more often. The spray become dirty yellow even faster. And at the end whole sprayer inside was covered in dark brown oily mess that I can’t even clean out of there… Two questions:
What I did wrong and was this spray even effective? The ingredients were Liquid Cop and Bonide All Season oil
I had similar experience this year mixing Kocide and horticultural oil…i.e. sprayer got clogged up with thick sludge. I had to take apart the sprayer and soak parts in hot water. And I never got the inside walls of the tank clean! (I’m pretty sure somewhere on this site Scott mentions that mixing copper and oil results in sludge.)
I learned, now, never to mix copper spray with oil. On the other hand, lime-sulfur with oil is no problem.
As for tree protection, if you were able to coat your trees before pump malfunction, I’d assume you’ve got a good sticky coating!.
I ended up buying another tank sprayer.
I almost cleaned it up. The trick was to add 1/2 gallon of hot water (into 2 gallon sprayer), a lot of dish soap and several synthetic wash clothes, replace the top, get it in two hands and shake it like crazy making sure water with clothes touch all the internal parts. Then dump the content, rinse and repeat again several times
I was curious about this so I tried a little to figure it out. Seems to me there could be a chemical reaction happening since the copper changed color, and the oil changed consistency.
I could not find a description for what that reaction might be. Liquid cop is copper ammonium acetate, which contains 10 hydrogen atoms. So it seems to me like the copper probably hydrogenated the oil, chemistry was never my thing though so guessing is the best I can do.
On the label it says to add liquid cop last when mixing. Did you do that?
Maybe it only happens in a more concentrated solution? I don’t know why that would be the case, but it is the only scenario I can think of where you could have made a mistake. Unless the mistake was simply trusting the label that they could be mixed.
I use pinene with copper. So far have had no reaction. By pinene I mean Nu film 17. I find that sticker so valuable. Once I sprayed copper and then it rained for eleven hours. I checked the trees and you could see the copper was still there. Nu film is an awesome product. I coat all scions and cuttings with the same mix of copper and Pinene to lock in moisture. Pinene is the main ingredient in Wilt Stop. Moldy fig cuttings never happen with this treatment. Stone fruit scion stays fresh. The copper I use is kocide.
Galina,
I use Kocide and NuFilm. I think because of water and oil, you may need a sprayer that has an agitator built in. I have such a sprayer.
In addition, I use a 5 gal bucket as my mixing container. Water goes in first, follow by Kocide powder. Mix them with a helix mixer attached to an electric drill. Add oil or Nufilm, mix it the same way again. Pour the mixture in a sprayer.
Since I use a helix mixture with an electric drill, my spray mix is well-mixed. Agitator on a sprayer definitely helps during spraying.
No battery needed. There is a built-in handle on one side of the sprayer. You hold a wand in one hand and pump that handle with the other hand to agitate the mix inside the tank. You only need to agitate the mix once in a while during spraying. Very convenient.
Agree, this was my sprayer upgrade after the sludge mess. I love it. The hand operated pump is powerful - can reach 12’ tree tops.
Mine has trade name ‘Jacto’ printed on side.
I think everybody pretty much figured this out, pretty easily. I had to think about how I mixed copper and oil and remembered that I always filled my tank completely with water since I’m still very strong and can shake it. I have a backpack and one-gallon and I pick either up and shake vigorously.
The combination obviously is not-compatible, period. Chemistry is f’ up, period.
After a bit of reading and there’s a ton of reading about everything you’d ever want to think about, spraying, here:
I still am not sure if it’s liquid Bonide that is the problem or if it’s any brand of liquid copper. Well, I’ll leave that for someone else. Maybe I missed something easy, too?
After I cleaned the sprayer, I applied copper and oil separately on the second half of the garden. Was a bit longer to apply, but much easy not to deal with the mess the mix created. My garden is small, so not a big deal if I can’t mix.What I am not sure about is if the copper got washed away by oil, when I applied it first or wouldn’t have a chance to contact with bark to kill fungus if I would apply it above the oil…
. I gave you an alternative.
