This video will show you how to spray
pesticide laterally to the side of a
target bush or tree but using water to practice with.
You will need a small area after of dry concrete; your pesticide label;
a knapsack sprayer and its nozzle;
clean water; canes or sticks and
personal protective equipment (PPE) as directed by your pesticide label.
From the pesticide label you will also know the amount of pesticide to be applied; the water volume rate to use
and the type of nozzle advised.
You will have used some of this
information to find out the size of nozzle you need
and so will now also know your: row or swath width
or the width of the canopy that you will be spraying; your comfortable spraying speed
the nozzle flow rate and the pressure
of the knapsack sprayer.
In this demonstration the label advises
us to use
75 ml of contact insecticide
in 800 L of water to the hectare,
[or 80 ml for every square meter of treated area] to control our example pest in coffee.
These coffee trees cover 2 square
meters of ground
so each tree will need to be treated
with 160 ml of spray.
80 ml being applied from each side 
of the row.
We have elected to use a hollow cone
nozzle to spray medium-size drops.
We have calculated that the nozzle size we need
has a flow rate of 0.6 L/minute [or ten ml/second].
The swath width produced by the nozzle is 0.5 meters
and knapsack pressure will be 1.6 bar.
Our operator will be spraying laterally
with the nozzle 50 cm from the foliage
When practicing spraying only use clean
water
and wear your PPE so that you get used to wearing it and can adjust it so that you are comfortable.
Some pesticide labels will permit the use of long sleeved shirt and trousers as dedicated PPE.
A better option is to wear a coverall.
This knapsack has already been cleaned
checked and calibrated.
If you are not familiar with how to do this please have a look at our separate videos.
When practicing spraying bushes using
water, start at the top of the bush
and move the nozzle carefully from one side to the other.
Keep the nozzle about 50 centimeters
away from the outer leaves of the canopy to
achieve the full width of the swath -
in this case half a meter. The size of these drops
and the angles of their projection ensure
the leaves at the front of the canopy
the concealed leaves within and the
stems are all sprayed.
When you have sprayed the full width of
the bush move the nozzle down the width of the swath
and spray back across the bush. Be
careful not to spray the ground nor to spray
over the top with the bush as this will
waste your product
and be a risk to the environment or
anyone near you.
When you have sprayed the one-side of all
the bushes in a row,
go to the other side of the row and
continue spraying.
Monitor you spraying pressure and keep
your spraying speed
constant. Constantly check that your nozzle is producing the right spray pattern and drop size
From time to time stop and check to see
if the drops have been evenly applied
by looking at the leaves at the top and the
bottom of the bush,
at the side and inside the leaf canopy. If some of the leaves have received too much pesticide,
like this one, where the drops have
accumulated and dripped off onto the ground,
then, the nozzle was being moved too slowly. Practice again
until you have the best deposits on the
leaves. This contact acting insecticide
should be sprayed using smaller drops to
produce an almost complete cover of drops
over every leaf. All contact pesticides
will only control the pest where the
sprayed drop has made direct contact with the pest.
So check that every leaf and stem has a
cover of drops over the entire target surface.
When air is coming our of the nozzle and
the spray liquid is all used,
place a stake at this point to mark the point where spraying must start again with the next load.
Leave a small un-sprayed area to be sprayed later with
the water used to clean the inside of the sprayer.
© 2015, Syngenta. All rights reserved.
