February 5, 2025 • 46 mins
This week on the War Against Weeds Podcast, we have special guest Dr. Tom Wolf joining us to talk about water quality and its impact on herbicide applications.
You can find Tom on X: @nozzle_guy
Additional helpful links: https://sprayers101.com/mode-of-action-and-spray-quality/
2025 ND Weed Guide: https://www.ndsu.edu/agriculture/sites/default/files/2024-12/2025%20ND%20Weed%20Guide%20Final_With%20Color%20Covers.pdf
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Joe Ikley (00:06):
Welcome back to the war against weeds Podcast. I'm
Joe Ikley extension WeedScientist at North Dakota State
University. My co host today isSarah Lancaster. Sarah, how are
things in the Sunflower State?
Sarah Lancaster (00:20):
Oh, we're doing great down here. Classes started
this week, so the students areall happy.
Joe Ikley (00:27):
That's a different word than I would use on the
first class when I was astudent.
Sarah Lancaster (00:32):
It's all relative Joe.
Joe Ikley (00:34):
Good to know there's better students now than when I
was when I was an undergrad. Butthe main reason we're here
today, our guest is someonewe've had on before, Tom Wolf,
from up in Saskatoon. And Tom, Iknow some folks have heard you
on before, but want to give youthe chance to introduce yourself
or reintroduce yourself torepeat listeners.
Tom Wolf (00:55):
Sure. Thanks. Joe, thanks. Sarah. My name is Tom
Wolf. I'm a spray applicationspecialist. Really. What I've
done my whole career inSaskatoon, I serve Western
Canada, some of the northernparts of the states, and you
know, occasional, occasionaltimes, and I talk about how to
improve your spray application,droplet size, water volume,
(01:16):
water quality.
Joe Ikley (01:19):
And maybe before we really get into the water
quality that we want to covertoday, Sarah, we have to take a
minute. We've got a couple offootball champions right here.
So so bison won the FCSchampionship, and Tom, your alma
mater, just secured achampionship recently as well,
Tom Wolf (01:39):
the buckeyes by Alma Mater, they did it on Monday
night, didn't they? I watchedthat game, so congrats to you,
and I guess I'm happy as well onboth for both of those results.
Joe Ikley (01:51):
All right, but the main topic at hand today we
brought Tom on is we want,wanted to talk about spray water
quality, so kind of have aconversation about what that is
and how it can affectperformance. And so why don't we
just start at the top of what isspray water quality? What does
it mean when we're talking aboutthat term?
Tom Wolf (02:10):
Well I guess to me, it means, you know, what's in the
water, other than h2o there's alot of other chemicals that can
be in there, particularly ifit's groundwater, and those are
mostly salty, dissolvessometimes in surface water, you
can have suspended solids, youknow, like soil, like runoff
material, organic material,soil, small soil particles and
make it to turbid. But some ofthose can interfere with
(02:33):
herbicide activity, and that'sreally the issue.
Joe Ikley (02:36):
And so you kind of got into a little bit about some
of the sources of of of water,and how they may fix spray water
quality. As you mentioned,ground water, what are some
other water sources people mightbe drawing from, and potential
issues with those water sources?
Tom Wolf (02:52):
Yeah. I mean, the easiest things is, in fact, you
know, if you have a well,obviously ground water is a big
one. The problem with groundwater is it's usually old water,
aquifer water, so it's been incontact with with subterranean,
you know, rocks and things that,and it has had a lot of times,
1000s of years, in some cases,to for some of those materials
to dissolve into the water. Andthose can be harmful. So, you
(03:13):
know, we've got the hard watercations. Those are the big ones.
And and the groundwater sourcesare more likely to have those.
The other sources. The easiestother alternative is, of course,
to go to a surface water so adugout pond. Some people have a
stream or creek nearby that theymay draw from, but that's
relatively rare. We're usuallytalking about an on farm dugout.
(03:36):
In Saskatchewan, we havesloughs. So some people draw
water from sloughs, notnecessarily the cleanest water,
but it's another surface wateroption. And then, of course,
some of my clients are opting togo to municipal water. They have
not got a good well, theyhaven't got easy access to
surface water, or they don'twant to bother with, you know,
(03:58):
filtration and attribute issues.So they will, in fact, haul
water from a municipal source.In fact, just this past summer,
I was driving into southernAlberta. I saw a tender trailer
truck on the side of the roadand was doing something. So I
pulled in, and it was, in fact,a municipal water source. It was
the St Mary's River IrrigationDistrict, which serves the bow
(04:21):
Island, Tabor Lethbridge region.And they provide about a 200
gallon per minute electric pumpunderground, and they basically
go to fill up. And it's cost him$46 for 6000 US gallons to do
that. And it took him about 25minutes to fill up, which I
thought was very fast. So Ithought, well, that's a very
(04:43):
good option on the highway, easyaccess, if it's not too far from
the farm. Some people will, infact, store water from invisible
sources on their farm. They'llbuy a large water tank, and they
will haul it when they havetime. They will make sure it's
full enough, and then when theyneed to have, you know, 10,
2030, 1000 gallons on hand for aweek of heavy spraying. They've
got that ready made. And then avery small number of people will
(05:07):
go to RO water, reverse osmosiswater. It's, it's, you know,
it's the creme de la creme. Imean, of course, you're taking
everything out. It'squestionable to whether it's
worth it, you know, and and it,it creates other issues. And for
example, the biggest issue is,of course, that you're now,
mean, you know, you're managinga water quote, filtration system
(05:28):
of sorts as a power requirement.You have membranes that may need
service or replacement, and youhave to dispose of excess
enriched water. So for everygallon of RO water you make, you
dispose of a gallon of enriched,saltier water. And where do you
put that? If it is quite salty,you can't just put it, you know,
(05:51):
on the grass or on the shelterbelt, because it'll likely harm
those plants. So you shouldn'treally put in the ditch,
although that's an option. Somepeople put in a dugout. So those
are issues you have to contendwith. But let's, let's face it,
I mean, the vast majority offarms have wells, and
unfortunately, in that case,they do need to make sure that
water is good.
Joe Ikley (06:14):
Sarah, you had that look on your face like you had a
question at some point there.
Sarah Lancaster (06:18):
Well, Tom, read my mind. I was going to ask him
about the RO systems, because Ioccasionally will get questions,
because we have really hardwater in a lot of places here in
Kansas, since I'll occasionallyget questions about, do you
think these systems are worthit? How much improvement will we
see? And I don't have like datato answer those questions, so I
don't know if you've looked atit, numbers specifically around
(06:40):
any of those RO systems. Tom,
Tom Wolf (06:43):
you know, there was an RO vendor at a trade show that I
was at recently, and I did havea good discussion with him, and
I think that there are a numberof different options that they
provide. I found the options toactually be fairly attractive.
To be quite honest. I thoughtthe cost wasn't that bad, and I
don't remember the number. Sothere's a lot of numbers that go
through your mind at tradeshows, wow, you know, but then
(07:06):
you forget it again. But fact ofthe matter is that it was the
capacity of the RO system thatthey were selling was high
enough that you could keep upwith your spray operation. Now
you do need storage tanks, andyou you're not going to be able
to, you know, RO water and fillup a tender simultaneously.
You're going to have to havethat reserve buffering capacity.
(07:27):
So as I said, it's a bit of amanagement system. It's much
more convenient to just turn onthe transfer pump and fill up
the tender trailer or thesprayer and be done with it. And
can do that in just a fewminutes. But the RO is just a
little bit more intense. So Ialways ask people, you know, are
you prepared to have anothersystem that you need to manage?
You need to have, maybe freezingprotection and, you know, and
overwintering it and all thatother stuff? Do you want to do
(07:50):
that? It's a good question. Andsome people, most people, say
no, to be honest with you, butsome people do bother, yeah.
Sarah Lancaster (07:57):
And I guess the other thing I wondered if we
should touch on, like most ofour folks are using groundwater,
we know that it has a tendencyto have dissolved cations. Do
you have any thoughts, or, youknow, comments on what kinds of
testing folks should do fortheir water? How often they
should test to figure out whatthey have? Does that make sense?
(08:19):
Yeah, yeah.
Tom Wolf (08:20):
I would say there's probably three levels of testing
that that some people, you know,defer to. I mean, the easiest
thing for someone to do is tohave a connectivity meter, which
you can literally buy, you know,for, for $30 like they're just
available, they're small littleprobes, and you can dip them in
the water and they'll give you aconnectivity reading in micro
(08:41):
siemens per centimeter, and thatis, you know, we basically do
that only to see, hey, do weneed to go further with our
testing? So the threshold numberthat I always use is about 5 or
600 if the number is below thatin micro siemens per centimeter,
we don't really have a lot ofdissolved solace. And we
(09:02):
basically can say, you know, I'mpretty sure your water is good.
If the number is higher, if it's1000 2000 in some cases, it's
10,000 I mean, we've seen itall. Then we say, Oh, you've got
dissolved cations and anions.But we don't know what they are.
We have no idea what's causingcould be any of the things in
water. Some of them might not beharmful. So we that just
basically means, okay, now wehave to go further in testing.
(09:25):
The second step, if you don'twant to go, you know, all the
way to the to the properlaboratory testing, is to have
these water testing strips. Andthere's some that are come from
kind of the the home spaindustry, where you have
hardness strips, right? And theyhave this color coding, just
like the pH strips. And theproblem with them is, I find
that in the spa world, hardwater is like 200 parts per
(09:50):
million, okay, of totalhardness. That's not hard in
agricultural terms, we canbasically say that's pretty
good, right? But for the spapeople say, oh my goodness, so.
So their strips tend to end atthree or 400 parts per million
total hardness. It's very hardto get paper strips that go even
to 700 which is where we startto get really worried, right? So
(10:13):
it's really not that good adeal. What I always tell people
is, take a jar, clean water jar,clean water bottle, send it to a
proper lab and have the propertesting done. The main issue
with that is it takes a bit oftime. It might take a week or
two, and then when you get theresults back, if you haven't
(10:35):
studied up on your high schoolchemistry, you could have been
quoting someone. What does thismean? So that's, that's, I
think, the big challenge. I justhave a blanket answer. Email me
the PDF. Just email me the PDF,and I'll help you out. And I
know Joe and you and Sarah. I'mnot sure who's all done it, but
(10:55):
I know Joe on NDSU's website. Imean, there are how to interpret
a water quality test resultsthere. May you, maybe you have a
lot for your people as well. Sothere's these, these other
steps, but most people want totalk to someone. When they see
the test, they say, I want to, Iwant to hear someone's opinion
here.
Joe Ikley (11:11):
Yes, that's, that's page we keep in our guide. And I
think many people always, oftenrefer to it because the other
someone may call theiragronomist, or someone like Tom
and, well, yeah, a lot ofnumbers in my head. I'm on trade
show floor. Now, let me pullthat page up and make sure I'm
remembering this correctly.
Tom Wolf (11:30):
Yeah, for them, it's really, you know, it's really,
they want to have a no go or nogo answer. And you know, the
other thing too, is that thereis, of course, a utility
modifier market, right? We dohave water conditioners on the
market, and there are differentclaims, and maybe we'll get
there. Maybe you have a, youknow, we should leave that to
later, but there's always thiscounterbalancing of opinion. So
(11:53):
somebody says, you know, if youhave a question about your
water, add this product, andyour product and your problems
are solved. So is that actuallycorrect? What is the
professional opinion here? So wedo have to weigh in on some of
those assets in the most in mostcases, or other other products
that we don't know theingredients of, actually, but
you know, so it's a little bitof experience, little bit of
(12:14):
chemistry, little bit of justhelping people out that aren't
that familiar with it.
Joe Ikley (12:19):
And I do think, before we get into some of these
products and how to maybe modifyspray water, maybe take the step
here to talk about, you know,how does if you have this hard
water? So one of these numbersthat you mentioned are in the
concerning level, 700 or higher.How does that affect herbicide
performance? You know? Why isthat problematic when that
(12:40):
number is that high?
Tom Wolf (12:41):
Yeah, that's, that's a really important question. And
again, it's, unfortunately theanswer is kind of chemistry,
right? So most of our herbicidesare, in fact, weak acids. That
means they have a, basically anegative charge at some PHS, not
all PHS, and the pKa, of course,determines where that tipping
point is where, at lower belowthe pKa, they're mostly
(13:03):
protonated, which means they'renot Ionic, and then higher PHS,
they're deprotonated, whichmeans they're Ionic. And that
provides an opportunity forcations, positively charged
ions, to adhere and to bind, insome cases strongly, in some
cases very weakly, to theherbicide. And in that case, if
that, if they bind strongly, itchanges the herbicide shape
(13:25):
slightly. And the whole lock andkey, idea of mode of action like
basically enzyme binding site,lock and key, it doesn't fit
anymore different shape, doesn'tquite go in, doesn't inhibit the
enzyme that's the mate, and theway it works, and the products
that are most susceptible are,in fact, some of our most used
products. Glyphosate is numberone, by far, number one.
(13:46):
Glufosinate, Liberty other andnot another one. And then there
are some other weak acids,2,4-D, Amine is one. Dicamba
could be one. And then there aresome of the the dims, you know,
are, are are grass killer,sethoxydim, clethodim,
tralcoxidim, some of the, someof the older products that we no
(14:07):
longer use so much, the dims,have fallen a little bit out of
favor because of resistancedevelopment. But they're also
sensitive and but they're notsensitive necessarily to
hardness, they're sensitive tobicarbonates. So, you know,
there are, you have to know alittle bit. And I mean that that
basically sums it up, though,but I think most herbicides, to
some degree, will be, to somewill be somewhat susceptible to
(14:27):
that binding and thatinhibition, depending on the Ph
of your water.
Joe Ikley (14:33):
And perfect you know that with pH, because that was
kind of my next question of, Howdoes pH affect herbicides, the
pH or the water you're drawingout of, wherever you're drawing
water from,
Tom Wolf (14:44):
yeah, and it's such an important question, because the
aftermarket, I mean, let's faceit, I mean, there are basically
two main product groups that aresold for Water Conditioning. The
first one that we haven't evertalked about. Is ammonium
sulfate. So that is kind of thefertilizer where the sulfate can
bind with the antagonizingcations. Sulfates negatively
(15:08):
charged cations bind with it andthey form, usually a somewhat
less soluble or insoluble saltthat may precipitate out. And so
then the cation becomesunavailable. So that's really
the number one, and probably theone that we it's a kind of our
go to. It's generally available.It's not that expensive. It's
kind of a hassle because youhave to use a lot of it, but it
(15:30):
does dissolve easily in water.Can be available in liquid
forms. I don't want to coverthat off first. So it is still
our go to, but the aftermarkettends to go to the pH modifiers.
So it tends to and there aresome pH, some pH modifiers that
do, in fact, also bind to thecations, but there's not many.
(15:51):
The notable one is citric acid.Citric acid does bind or tie up
these cations. It also lowersthe pH, but propionic doesn't,
okay, it lowers the pH, but itdoesn't actually tie up. So we
have to be, you know, now we'regetting into chemistry, right?
Sulfuric acid, okay, it's not,it's not a weak acid, right? But
(16:11):
it does have self sulfate in it,so it will also do that. But the
real reason we have a concernabout the acids is that many of
our herbicides dissolve betterat high pH, not low pH. So we
have a solubility tank mixingissue that can create problems
in Canada and in the US alike.We are tank mixing always, and
(16:38):
we have to consider the mostlimiting member of that tank
mix, if it's a group two producta sulfonylurea,
triazolopyrimidines, you know,anything other than what's made
by BASF, The IMIs, then a low pHcan be harmful for tank mixing,
and it may, in fact, createproblems down the road. You're
kicking the can down the road.So, yeah, water quality, no
(17:01):
inhibition of glyphosate. Butnow tank clean out. Now you've
created a solution where thingsare possibly adhering to rubber
and plastic and and just noteasy to clean out anymore. Now
we have to solve that problem.How do we solve that? Usually,
with the pH adjustment. Get themback in solution. That's where
(17:22):
ammonia comes in. So, yeah,that's kind of where, where I'm
worried. And even some of theother modes of action have not
all members of these groups. Butthe classic example is
saflufenacil Sharpen in the US.It's an important product for
pre seed burn off and also indesiccation, and it dissolves
(17:46):
better at high pH. In fact, itworks better at high pH. There's
a recent paper in Weed Sciencethat showed some efficacy data.
So I think we ought to cast ournet a little wider than the
group twos and just make surewe're good with with everything.
Even some group 27 is all betterat high pH.
Joe Ikley (18:05):
So here's my first side tangent, just question I
got asked, and it's like, oh,that just sounds like a master's
project right there. But withwith some of our new spray
technology coming down the line,we can have the separate tank,
separate line system, andsomeone was asking me, well, if
I want to spray glyphosate andsharpen I know they're generally
(18:26):
better at different PHS, whatwould happen if I put them in
separate tanks and got the spraywater at the right pH within
each tank to make the mostsoluble? That's a very good
question. I don't believe Idon't know what happens.
Tom Wolf (18:39):
I know I have to draw on something that Peter Sikkema
once said. And Peter Sikkema asyou know, is retired professor
of wheat Science University ofGuelph so he has some opinions
on this, and not particularlythe two tank system, because
that's kind of a new thing. Buthe said to me once, so you've
got a water quality issue thatinhibits glyphosate, so you're
(19:00):
going to get an adjuvant. You'regoing to mix it in, make sure
it's dissolved, and then add theglyphosate, and then do all that
stuff. I says, Why don't youjust increase the rate of the
glyphosate? You've already gotit in your hand. It's
inexpensive, and the label is sowide, most of our most of our
uses, that are permitted athigher rates. And also it's
maybe cheaper than the utilitymodifier you're gonna put in
(19:22):
there. So I always kind of say,well, that's interesting, Peter.
I mean, it's not really, I don'treally like to recommend higher
herbicide rates. I don't knowwhy, but it's just in most
sometimes you could get offlabel a little bit on that. But
I kind of wonder whether,whether we can do some of that.
(19:46):
And, yeah, keep it simple. Youknow that if you look at see and
spray ultimate, this is the theproduct that's coming on stream,
pretty strong in some parts ofthe states now. Corn and soybean
country two tanks. But theintention isn't necessarily to
tie up, like to separate twodifferent solubilities. It's to,
(20:09):
it's to do a pre and a postsimultaneous, right and spots
for the post, but broadcast thepre and so I don't know whether
that's that's really the answer.It's an expensive solution to
the problem, in my opinion.
Joe Ikley (20:23):
And in this case, this particular person, they
were one to spot spray theirglyphosate and then have a
higher rate of Saflufenacil intheir broadcast to get some
residual as well. So they'rethey're just doing that pre
plant situation, but just tryingto see how they could best
utilize the system that theyhad.
Tom Wolf (20:44):
I like it, when you just described that to me. I
think that makes a lot of senseto me. If they have that kind of
a system, more power to them,you know. And you know, we also
have that, you know, it's directinjection. Doesn't really
address it, because that does gointo the same carrier stream,
and then the pH will beessentially same as it would
have been in the tank. But thetwo tank system, I mean, it's
(21:05):
really just John Deere seeingspray ultimate. And then, of
course, green eye Technologieshas it as well. One smart spray,
but they're all spot spray basedsystems. They're they're a
rather expensive way to do that.
Joe Ikley (21:18):
All right, it got off my attention. Forgot where I was
out of my actual list ofquestions,
Tom Wolf (21:23):
are you recommending, Sarah, that your clients do a
proper chemical water test andthat's properly analyzed and so
you have a good knowledge ofwhat what's in there? Or do you
have any other shortcuts thatyou use?
Sarah Lancaster (21:36):
No, So my you reassured me Tom, because yeah,
my standard answer is that, ifyou need to know what's in your
water, it's, in the long run,not that great of an expense to
get the sample set to. You know,there's a handful of labs down
here that will, will do that.So, yeah, that's, that's my
general recommendation, yeah.So, you know, we talk about,
(21:56):
especially if they got, like,new farms, new wells, that kind
of stuff.
Tom Wolf (22:00):
Yeah, one big change that we've seen here in the
last, say, five or maybeslightly more years has really
been the formation of Winfieldunited. That's really how
Winfield came into Canada. Imean, they were already, you
know, one of the largestdistributors in the US, and they
had a very strong program onwater conditioners. It's the
(22:24):
product here is called Crimson.It is an ammonium sulfate based
product. But they were thenramping up the, you know, the
marketing for it, and they madepeople aware. And of course,
they have a network, and theytalked about water quality. And
of course, the thing, thebrilliant stroke that they
pulled was that they used JohnNalewaja's formula, right? So
(22:44):
back in the day, John and hislab said, what is the actual
strength of each can in terms ofinhibiting, you know,
herbicides. And then hedeveloped a multiple regression
formula. So if you have the PPMof iron and magnesium and
calcium and potassium andsodium, and you just put that
(23:07):
into the formula, it tells youhow much ammonium sulfate to
add. And that has been abrilliant stroke, in my opinion.
So first of all, it's reallyuseful. But second of all, it
brings to mind these twoapproaches to water treatment
that we've always had in Canada.One of them is there's a certain
amount of water hardness thatwould just simply say we're good
(23:28):
with it. It's not a problem,like I mentioned it maybe, is it
200 maybe is it 300 I don't knowwhat it is, but below that, we
say, You know what, your wateris good. If you put a 200 part
per million water quality testinto the null wire formula, it
ends up with about a pound ofammonium sulfate per 100
gallons, or crimson or whatever,right? So basically, any water
(23:52):
sample will call for some AMS,right? It's a very good way to
get people to put that in thetank. They may may may or may
not benefit from it, to be quitehonest.
Sarah Lancaster (24:03):
So, so yeah, that's the question that that
comes next, right? Is, even ifyou can improve the water
quality, are you actuallyimproving weed control? Right?
There's some buffer built inthere in terms of, like
herbicide rates and the waterquality might not be the
limiting factor there.
Tom Wolf (24:20):
Very true. And, you know, there's the other really
interesting part of ammoniumsulfate. One of the reasons I
like to like to promote its use,to become honest, it has
ammonium in it, right? So, I wastaught undergrad Weed Science by
a professor from Scotland whowas on sabbatical. He replaced
(24:41):
Ian Morrison. His name wasGeorge Marshall, and in
undergrad, Weed Science at theUniversity of Manitoba, he
taught us about ion trapping.This was the 80s, right? And
he's talked about what ammoniumdoes, what its contribution is
in ion trapping. And to make along story short. It, the
(25:01):
presence of ammonium in thewater tank actually facilitates
the pH gradient across amembrane, which is driving force
of ion trapping and weak acidherbicides are the benefactors
of this, because they're chargedand they're they're more likely
to be negatively charged at highhigh PHS, and more likely to be
(25:23):
positive or neutral at low PHS.And therefore, you acidify the
outside wall, the membranethrough this proton pump, you're
more likely to cross thatmembrane if you're a herbicide,
and then you can't get back out.Deported when you're on the
inside and you're now, you're inthe symplastNow you got to
(25:43):
translocate. You have no choice.And you know, that's one of the
reasons that UAN URI ammoniumnitrate, it has ammonium in it
also sometimes works as anadjuvant, even though it doesn't
have sulfate. So I find thatthat little tidbit to be really
useful, like, what's thedownside of adding AMS if you
don't need it? There isn'thardly any, but there's an
(26:07):
upside. You just can't attributethe increased efficacy
necessarily to the tying up ofCations and it might be ion
trapping, right?
Joe Ikley (26:17):
The other part, I know Nalewaja would also preach,
and he also had a lot of lot ofwork with electron microscopes
and looking at weed leafsurfaces is you also don't know
which weeds are out there, whatthe cations on the leaf surface
might be. For instance,velevetleaf tends to have some
calcium on the leaf surface thathaving additional AMS in there,
(26:39):
or other products will help kindof overcome some binding up on
those leaf surface. Cations,yeah,
Tom Wolf (26:46):
is, is lambs quarters in that camp as well. Or I'm
mistaken about this mostlyvelvet leaf. I don't even
remember exactly, but, but
Joe Ikley (26:56):
lambquarters has a lot of stuff going on, but no
velvetleaf was the classic onewith calcium,
Tom Wolf (27:00):
gotcha, yeah, yeah. And I think in that case, yeah,
it doesn't matter what's in thewater, it's already, already on
the leaf, yeah.
Joe Ikley (27:10):
But that was a good way to get me back to find my
list. and, we were, we wereabout right there on track with
what I was mentioning, anyways,is some of the methods and
products to mitigate some issueswith poor spray water quality.
We've kind of talked aboutammonium sulfate, but you
alluded to some other productsearlier, and and some things to
discuss with some of those.Yeah,
Tom Wolf (27:30):
I mean, the the, you know, the the low the pH
modification modifiers are, youknow, they're interesting, but
again, it's a chemistry thing,you know, I look at the pKa, for
example, of glyphosate, it hasthree pKa, while it actually has
four. But one of them isirrelevant, but the pKa is are
(27:52):
pretty low, right? Two of thosethree, the three or four PKAs
are pretty low, which basicallymeans, if you want glyphosate to
be fully protonated andtherefore more oily, more oil
soluble. The pH has to go waydown. I mean, we're gonna have
to be at two, okay. I mean,that's very, very low. And even
(28:16):
if you're at four or five, youmight still have two of the of
the, you know, groups acidic,right, and Ionic. And so doesn't
take a lot of ionic character ona molecule like that to make it
completely water soluble. Imean, many herbicides are
completely water soluble. Havejust one acid group, right? And
(28:39):
glyphosate and glufosinate haveso many so you can protonate all
you want. They're still going tobe water soluble, and they're
still not going to make itacross the membrane that easily,
right? And so that's why I'mkind of think the the the
acidifies a little bit oversoldhere right now. I Are there
(29:03):
others that I'm missing? Whatare you hearing in terms of
effective non AMS, conditioners?Is there something, something
out there?
Joe Ikley (29:14):
Most of the ones that I get questions on, I mean, the
the other thing that became aninterest that three or four
years ago was products thatraised the pH, and this was
because of some label languageon on the Dicamba labels that we
use in soybean and cotton and inthe US, where basically said,
you know, we need to raise a pHabove a certain threshold and
(29:35):
top my head. I can't rememberit, but, and basically just
said, if your pH after you mixis below this contact your
extension specialists forproducts to use, we're all like,
wait a minute, besides a basicblend adjuvant. So it's kind of
like, well, there's, don't knowexactly what the marketplace is
(29:57):
for right now, but that was thatwas still chemistry. I mean, but
basically to avoid volatilityfrom Dicamba, so getting it
above a certain threshold pHwhere it would be less likely to
volatilize,
Tom Wolf (30:09):
right? And it was explicitly prohibited from using
AMS Dicamba, because AMS doesacidify slightly, and it just
enhanced the vapor loss fromfrom dicamba to such a degree,
yeah?
Joe Ikley (30:24):
And that also led to another class, you know, the of
the non nitrogen containingwater conditioners, to still try
and tie up some of those cationswithout acidifying the solution.
Again, kind of driven aroundminimizing the chance for
volatility.
Tom Wolf (30:40):
That's right, yeah. But you know, there are, what do
they call them? EDTA? What isthat? That's there's a term for
it. I've lost. It's themolecules that envelop and take
others out of solution in adifferent way. And so those are
(31:01):
also possible ways of doing it.And, you know, some of the
professional water conditionersmay have those in them, and
that's also obviously verybeneficial. Just getting back
to, you know, raising the pH, wedo have a number of products,
not just now, but alsohistorically on the Great
(31:25):
Plains. They're group twos,where ammonia was recommended as
an adjuvant to increasesolubility. And the classic one
that we still use is peroxylam.It's called simplicity. It's a
group two gramicide, also broadleaf killer. It has ammonium
hydroxide as a little jug in thein the box in Canada. And the
(31:47):
other instructions are, add theammonium hydroxide first, that
raises the pH, and that willincrease the likelihood that
that simplicity dissolves betterin the tank, and then you have
less clean out problems, right?Again, kicking things down, down
the road a little bit. So thatis still good. And so there are
label statements, or at leastsupplemental label statements,
(32:08):
in some cases, that guide youthere. And of course, there's
other ones, you know, if youremember anthem and Sundance,
the misstep by Monsanto about 20years ago, where they brought in
group twos that were highly pHdependent in the solubility. We
had carryover issues, likethere's no tomorrow, and they
actually withdrew those productsagain from from the Canadian
Prairies, but in the interim,they said, add ammonia to
(32:30):
increase the solubility. So butas I said, you know, like we
have more we have such complextank mixes. Now, because of
resistance, you you just have toknow what the solubility of each
of those components are and beguided by them, and then the
neutral PHS are, in fact, thesafest.
Joe Ikley (32:50):
And that the tank clean out is another important
one. Some of our herbicidelabels specifically say and get
to this certain pH when youclean out the tank, because to
get that better solubility, andmake sure we get it all, all the
surfaces on the tank and in thehoses and valves and everywhere
else.
Tom Wolf (33:08):
Yeah, what about longevity in the tank? Have you
done any work on that? Either ofyou on, you know, whether, if
we, see, have to quit because ofrain and are storing, you know,
1000 gallons in the tank thatdidn't get sprayed out, that's
already mixed. What is the pH?What is, what is the likelihood
(33:31):
of that to degrade and to beuseless in a few days?
Sarah Lancaster (33:34):
So I remember, when I was in grad school at
Texas a&m, there was a lab mateof mine that was looking at, I
think trifloxy Sulfur on right,is that staple? I think that's
staple. Maybe. I don't remember,I
Joe Ikley (33:48):
I don't know, it's cotton
Sarah Lancaster (33:48):
it's a cotton product. Exactly, yeah,
Tom Wolf (33:51):
what's cotton?
Sarah Lancaster (33:54):
Anyway? Mark was looking at three different
PHS and different time periods,and there was an effect and how,
how stable that molecule was inthe tank. I was looking it up as
I was kind of talking,
Joe Ikley (34:07):
I know, and I, I want people to find all the numbers
behind it, but it's one of thesethings that when I was at
Purdue. So one of thesequestions comes from every year,
because it's always, someonealways gets rained out in that
state, yeah, of glyphosate and agroup one, herbicide, I think it
was clethodim. Probably doesn'texactly matter, but, and, you
(34:28):
know, basically had rained outfor four days, you know what?
What's the probability of thatgroup one still being in there?
And I know the the extensionanswer that I had heard down
there at the time was, well,basically, if you're going to
want to add some more group oneback in so in that lower pH
environment, because glyphosateitself will drop the pH. So when
you store it that long, the highprobability of that group one
(34:51):
breaking down in storage.
Tom Wolf (34:54):
I found one label chlorimuron if you look at. The
label, it warns against eitherextreme pH due to alkaline or
acid hydrolysis and breakdown.But then I also found a table
that was compiled by someoneelse, I don't remember the name
(35:14):
on insecticides, which areusually listed as being
sensitive to alkalinehydrolysis, and the half life
was listed the of the probably15 or 20 insecticides on that
list. Most had half lives thatwere days long. Some had weeks
long half lives. And indeed, ifit was alkaline, the one half
(35:34):
life phosmate, I think it was,went to hours, but most were
still on the day range. But ofcourse, the recommendation is
that if you have something proneto alkaline hydrolysis, that you
should acidify the tank withwhen storing for prolonged
periods. I don't believe that wehave a lot of herbicide
candidates that fall in thatcategory. I've just not heard of
(35:56):
a complete loss of efficacy withan overnight store.
Joe Ikley (35:58):
No, I think the bigger issue would be if you got
a clear or clear poly tank andhave it out in the sun for those
couple of days while you'resitting there waiting for the
field to dry out some differentthings going on and get heated
up by the sun and get some UVrays shining in there.
Tom Wolf (36:17):
Exactly. Yeah, that's probably the bigger danger.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Ph may nothelp you there, yeah.
Joe Ikley (36:25):
So did we buy enough time for you to find that?
Sarah Lancaster (36:27):
I couldn't find it. I found the one where I
looked at absorption andtranslocation. But I know that
we were doing some justdissipation over time, stuff. I
can't, I can't find it. And itwas, it was staple Pyrithiobac,
not, I had the wrong AI.
Tom Wolf (36:42):
you know, you know, I don't want to complain about
marketing, but some products aresold, putting fear in people's
minds that if they don't acidifythe tank, it's going to be
useless tomorrow. And I justthink that we have to be a
little bit more diligent aboutchallenging those statements,
because they're being used tosell product that acidifies and
(37:03):
it creates other problems downthe road. And I just want to
make sure that we have the factshere.
Joe Ikley (37:09):
And the good thing is, well, the limiting factor
here to prove all these is timeon our end. But since it is
chemistry, a lot of this stuffcan be replicated inside if we
have the time and all the properingredients.
Tom Wolf (37:21):
Yeah and we shouldn't really have to do it frankly.
You know, the products thatwe're using are mature products.
They've been on the market, mostcases, for a long time already,
and the chemistry of these andtheir likelihood of breakdown
should be known. And you know, Ido use the WSSA publication a
lot that has the guide toherbicides, and it does have
(37:42):
solubilities and and half livesin some cases, but not in all.
But we really ought to. We havethe information the
manufacturers should beforthcoming with sharing it.
Joe Ikley (37:51):
So I'm shift gears here for the kind of the last
prepared question I had, becausethis, this is a follow up Tom
same, uh, same meeting a weekago or so as brought this up
because there's an interestingquestion of mine during a
drought year. And so the thegeneral question now going to be
specific when I was asked is,are there any water sources that
(38:14):
should simply be avoided forpesticide applications? And I
brought this up because during adrought I was, I got a call
from, actually, was up from inManitoba. Basically, I was given
two choices. I can draw from theRed River, and that time, it's
very tell me you're kind ofcloudy up there. So you can, you
know, the soil particles atleast, or industrial wastewater.
Tom Wolf (38:44):
I don't want to like I grew up in the valley, okay? And
for me to be pausing between theRed River and industrial waste
and have that moment where I'mnot sure which is better, that
doesn't reflect well on the reddoes it?
Joe Ikley (39:01):
Not by the time it gets that far downstream or
upstream, I guess.
Tom Wolf (39:04):
But no it's, it's suspended solids. That's the
issue here. I mean, yeah, itgoes through a couple of cities,
but, you know, we, we're doing,I hope, a half decent job of
treating that water. But what wewould, we sometimes talk about,
and I don't know whether, likeindustrial waste. I mean, that's
(39:24):
a Come on, who what? What ispossibly in there? It? Could
there be heavy metal? Who knowswhat's in that could be harmful
to the food we're growing? Imean, I would be very, very
reluctant to, you know, committo that. If we're looking at a
turbid water source that's runoff on clay land and it's
cloudy, there is a clarifyingsolution that we may have. It's
(39:47):
called aluminum sulfate. Now onour farm in the valley, we used
it and we had dugouts becauseour well water was very saline
and but we also sometimes hadcloudy water. So we would
shovel, literally, aluminumsulfate from a boat into the
dugout, and then therecommendation was to agitate
(40:11):
the dugout thoroughly. The onlyway you can really do that is
with an outboard motor. So wegot a little one, and we put it
on a little dinghy, and we justbasically drove it around, you
know, and got that thing mixedup. And after 24 to 48 hours,
believe it or not, that pondwater was significantly
(40:34):
clarified. So it's a little bitlike cream of tartar for anyone
who makes homemade juices. Itdoes the same. It's, it's a
coagulating agent. And so I'vemade up. When I lived in Ohio,
Frank Hall was invited hisexperience. He's an
entomologist. He was mysupervisor, him and Kent
(40:56):
Harrison down in Columbus. ButFrank's lab did Apple work. And
so they always had all thesecrates of delicious, wonderful
apples in the lab looking for,you know, disease and insect
damage, and then the untreatedones we took home, we ate them,
we dried them, and we madejuice, and we used cream of
tartar, and then clarified thejuice, right? So it was and
(41:19):
aluminum Sulfate does the samething. So that's an option for
some of the red river waters. Iguess it's not a solution for a
tank, because the sediment hasto be disposed of somewhere.
It'll resuspend itself. But itis a solution for a pond.
Joe Ikley (41:38):
That particular scenario I said, even though we
can see that there's stuff, wehave to condition when the water
point out of the red, I'd ratherdo that than the unknown of, as
you said, the unknown of thewastewater, what may be in
there.
Tom Wolf (41:53):
Yeah, exactly. You know, remember when we had a dry
couple years there? In 21 I gota call from Kim Brown, the
Manitoba weed specialist, andshe said, because our
reservoirs, our irrigationreservoirs, are really low, and
they had some surface and somedig out reservoirs near Morton
Winkler area, and they needrelied on them for irrigation,
they were wanting to conservewater, and wanted to prevent
(42:15):
farmers from using that water tospray their crops. And so this
is specific, suggested that thefarmers use industrial
wastewater, gray water of somesort. And I'm going, you know,
I'd rather ask the irrigators toirrigate one quarter inch less.
That would solve all of Manitobawater supply problems. For the
(42:37):
spraying does not use a lot ofwater, not in the big scheme of
Joe Ikley (42:41):
Now, if you're how many, what, 27,000 and change
things.
gallons of water in an acreinch, so a quarter of that
compared to we can cover a lotof ground with that savings.
Tom Wolf (42:52):
we spray all year long.
Joe Ikley (42:59):
All right? Dr Lancaster, any further questions
before we wrap this one up?
Sarah Lancaster (43:06):
I don't think so. I think it was a good
conversation. So thanks forjoining us. Tom,
Tom Wolf (43:11):
Yeah, my pleasure to be here, you know, and, and
it's, it's always great. I mean,I gotta pay homage to North
Dakota State on this one. Ithink you were fortunate enough
to have John, John Nalewaja, asa long standing faculty member
who really, really broke the iceon this discussion and did the
work and came up with solutions.And you know, that's the sign of
(43:32):
a of a true specialist that hasthe interests of farmers in
mind. Not just the problem isidentified, but the solution is
generated, and it has reallychanged how we spray. And it's a
tremendous, a tremendouslyvaluable impact. And I refer to
the North Dakota State weedcontrol guide, where many of the
research that John and his fall,his, you know, subsequent
(43:54):
replacements followed, and it'sterrific information. I
recommend to anyone listening tothe podcast to download the
North Dakota weed control guideand go to the appendix. Go to
the appendices some greatinformation there on water
quality and conditioning.
Joe Ikley (44:08):
We are still one of the few places that does offer
that for free as a PDF online,so it's always a benefit there.
But before we do go, want tomake sure the time you get the
chance to let people know wherethey can find, you know, a
couple different platforms wecan find you at and some of your
information.
Tom Wolf (44:27):
Yeah, I'm still on Twitter. I'm nozzle_guy on
Twitter, and so you can stillreach me there. I still check if
I have notifications. I'm nottweeting as much as I used to.
Some of us are reducing thatactivity slightly, but it was
great when it was hot. You canfind me on sprayers101.com.
Which is a website that JasonDeVoe, who is the weed
(44:48):
specialist, or the applicationspecialist for the province of
Ontario, run. It's a freewebsite. It's not a commercial
website. It's intended for theuse, use by practitioners. So
farmers. And so on. And we dohave some articles on water
quality. Some of them are guestarticles and and we're trying to
help out with with with the pHquestions, for example. And at
(45:10):
the bottom of the of the frontpage, you scroll down, you'll
see Tom at sprayers101.com,that's how you reach me. Jason's
also on there. You can reach himthat way as well.
Joe Ikley (45:20):
Perfect. Well, once again, Tom, thanks for coming
back on. Always great to havethis conversations with you.
Thank the audience again fortuning in, and we will catch you
on the next episode of the waragainst weeds.
As always, we thank you forlistening to the war against
(45:42):
weeds podcast. Just anotherreminder, you can find our
podcast hosted on the CropProtection Network, or CPN, for
short. So this is another greatresource that's driven by
extension, scientists atdifferent universities for pest
management. And with that, wewill see you next week on the
war against weeds podcast.
Welcome back to the war against weeds Podcast. I'm
Joe Ikley extension WeedScientist at North Dakota State
University. My co host today isSarah Lancaster. Sarah, how are
things in the Sunflower State?
Sarah Lancaster (00:20):
Oh, we're doing great down here. Classes started
this week, so the students areall happy.
Joe Ikley (00:27):
That's a different word than I would use on the
first class when I was astudent.
Sarah Lancaster (00:32):
It's all relative Joe.
Joe Ikley (00:34):
Good to know there's better students now than when I
was when I was an undergrad. Butthe main reason we're here
today, our guest is someonewe've had on before, Tom Wolf,
from up in Saskatoon. And Tom, Iknow some folks have heard you
on before, but want to give youthe chance to introduce yourself
or reintroduce yourself torepeat listeners.
Tom Wolf (00:55):
Sure. Thanks. Joe, thanks. Sarah. My name is Tom
Wolf. I'm a spray applicationspecialist. Really. What I've
done my whole career inSaskatoon, I serve Western
Canada, some of the northernparts of the states, and you
know, occasional, occasionaltimes, and I talk about how to
improve your spray application,droplet size, water volume,
(01:16):
water quality.
Joe Ikley (01:19):
And maybe before we really get into the water
quality that we want to covertoday, Sarah, we have to take a
minute. We've got a couple offootball champions right here.
So so bison won the FCSchampionship, and Tom, your alma
mater, just secured achampionship recently as well,
Tom Wolf (01:39):
the buckeyes by Alma Mater, they did it on Monday
night, didn't they? I watchedthat game, so congrats to you,
and I guess I'm happy as well onboth for both of those results.
Joe Ikley (01:51):
All right, but the main topic at hand today we
brought Tom on is we want,wanted to talk about spray water
quality, so kind of have aconversation about what that is
and how it can affectperformance. And so why don't we
just start at the top of what isspray water quality? What does
it mean when we're talking aboutthat term?
Tom Wolf (02:10):
Well I guess to me, it means, you know, what's in the
water, other than h2o there's alot of other chemicals that can
be in there, particularly ifit's groundwater, and those are
mostly salty, dissolvessometimes in surface water, you
can have suspended solids, youknow, like soil, like runoff
material, organic material,soil, small soil particles and
make it to turbid. But some ofthose can interfere with
(02:33):
herbicide activity, and that'sreally the issue.
Joe Ikley (02:36):
And so you kind of got into a little bit about some
of the sources of of of water,and how they may fix spray water
quality. As you mentioned,ground water, what are some
other water sources people mightbe drawing from, and potential
issues with those water sources?
Tom Wolf (02:52):
Yeah. I mean, the easiest things is, in fact, you
know, if you have a well,obviously ground water is a big
one. The problem with groundwater is it's usually old water,
aquifer water, so it's been incontact with with subterranean,
you know, rocks and things that,and it has had a lot of times,
1000s of years, in some cases,to for some of those materials
to dissolve into the water. Andthose can be harmful. So, you
(03:13):
know, we've got the hard watercations. Those are the big ones.
And and the groundwater sourcesare more likely to have those.
The other sources. The easiestother alternative is, of course,
to go to a surface water so adugout pond. Some people have a
stream or creek nearby that theymay draw from, but that's
relatively rare. We're usuallytalking about an on farm dugout.
(03:36):
In Saskatchewan, we havesloughs. So some people draw
water from sloughs, notnecessarily the cleanest water,
but it's another surface wateroption. And then, of course,
some of my clients are opting togo to municipal water. They have
not got a good well, theyhaven't got easy access to
surface water, or they don'twant to bother with, you know,
(03:58):
filtration and attribute issues.So they will, in fact, haul
water from a municipal source.In fact, just this past summer,
I was driving into southernAlberta. I saw a tender trailer
truck on the side of the roadand was doing something. So I
pulled in, and it was, in fact,a municipal water source. It was
the St Mary's River IrrigationDistrict, which serves the bow
(04:21):
Island, Tabor Lethbridge region.And they provide about a 200
gallon per minute electric pumpunderground, and they basically
go to fill up. And it's cost him$46 for 6000 US gallons to do
that. And it took him about 25minutes to fill up, which I
thought was very fast. So Ithought, well, that's a very
(04:43):
good option on the highway, easyaccess, if it's not too far from
the farm. Some people will, infact, store water from invisible
sources on their farm. They'llbuy a large water tank, and they
will haul it when they havetime. They will make sure it's
full enough, and then when theyneed to have, you know, 10,
2030, 1000 gallons on hand for aweek of heavy spraying. They've
got that ready made. And then avery small number of people will
(05:07):
go to RO water, reverse osmosiswater. It's, it's, you know,
it's the creme de la creme. Imean, of course, you're taking
everything out. It'squestionable to whether it's
worth it, you know, and and it,it creates other issues. And for
example, the biggest issue is,of course, that you're now,
mean, you know, you're managinga water quote, filtration system
(05:28):
of sorts as a power requirement.You have membranes that may need
service or replacement, and youhave to dispose of excess
enriched water. So for everygallon of RO water you make, you
dispose of a gallon of enriched,saltier water. And where do you
put that? If it is quite salty,you can't just put it, you know,
(05:51):
on the grass or on the shelterbelt, because it'll likely harm
those plants. So you shouldn'treally put in the ditch,
although that's an option. Somepeople put in a dugout. So those
are issues you have to contendwith. But let's, let's face it,
I mean, the vast majority offarms have wells, and
unfortunately, in that case,they do need to make sure that
water is good.
Joe Ikley (06:14):
Sarah, you had that look on your face like you had a
question at some point there.
Sarah Lancaster (06:18):
Well, Tom, read my mind. I was going to ask him
about the RO systems, because Ioccasionally will get questions,
because we have really hardwater in a lot of places here in
Kansas, since I'll occasionallyget questions about, do you
think these systems are worthit? How much improvement will we
see? And I don't have like datato answer those questions, so I
don't know if you've looked atit, numbers specifically around
(06:40):
any of those RO systems. Tom,
Tom Wolf (06:43):
you know, there was an RO vendor at a trade show that I
was at recently, and I did havea good discussion with him, and
I think that there are a numberof different options that they
provide. I found the options toactually be fairly attractive.
To be quite honest. I thoughtthe cost wasn't that bad, and I
don't remember the number. Sothere's a lot of numbers that go
through your mind at tradeshows, wow, you know, but then
(07:06):
you forget it again. But fact ofthe matter is that it was the
capacity of the RO system thatthey were selling was high
enough that you could keep upwith your spray operation. Now
you do need storage tanks, andyou you're not going to be able
to, you know, RO water and fillup a tender simultaneously.
You're going to have to havethat reserve buffering capacity.
(07:27):
So as I said, it's a bit of amanagement system. It's much
more convenient to just turn onthe transfer pump and fill up
the tender trailer or thesprayer and be done with it. And
can do that in just a fewminutes. But the RO is just a
little bit more intense. So Ialways ask people, you know, are
you prepared to have anothersystem that you need to manage?
You need to have, maybe freezingprotection and, you know, and
overwintering it and all thatother stuff? Do you want to do
(07:50):
that? It's a good question. Andsome people, most people, say
no, to be honest with you, butsome people do bother, yeah.
Sarah Lancaster (07:57):
And I guess the other thing I wondered if we
should touch on, like most ofour folks are using groundwater,
we know that it has a tendencyto have dissolved cations. Do
you have any thoughts, or, youknow, comments on what kinds of
testing folks should do fortheir water? How often they
should test to figure out whatthey have? Does that make sense?
(08:19):
Yeah, yeah.
Tom Wolf (08:20):
I would say there's probably three levels of testing
that that some people, you know,defer to. I mean, the easiest
thing for someone to do is tohave a connectivity meter, which
you can literally buy, you know,for, for $30 like they're just
available, they're small littleprobes, and you can dip them in
the water and they'll give you aconnectivity reading in micro
(08:41):
siemens per centimeter, and thatis, you know, we basically do
that only to see, hey, do weneed to go further with our
testing? So the threshold numberthat I always use is about 5 or
600 if the number is below thatin micro siemens per centimeter,
we don't really have a lot ofdissolved solace. And we
(09:02):
basically can say, you know, I'mpretty sure your water is good.
If the number is higher, if it's1000 2000 in some cases, it's
10,000 I mean, we've seen itall. Then we say, Oh, you've got
dissolved cations and anions.But we don't know what they are.
We have no idea what's causingcould be any of the things in
water. Some of them might not beharmful. So we that just
basically means, okay, now wehave to go further in testing.
(09:25):
The second step, if you don'twant to go, you know, all the
way to the to the properlaboratory testing, is to have
these water testing strips. Andthere's some that are come from
kind of the the home spaindustry, where you have
hardness strips, right? And theyhave this color coding, just
like the pH strips. And theproblem with them is, I find
that in the spa world, hardwater is like 200 parts per
(09:50):
million, okay, of totalhardness. That's not hard in
agricultural terms, we canbasically say that's pretty
good, right? But for the spapeople say, oh my goodness, so.
So their strips tend to end atthree or 400 parts per million
total hardness. It's very hardto get paper strips that go even
to 700 which is where we startto get really worried, right? So
(10:13):
it's really not that good adeal. What I always tell people
is, take a jar, clean water jar,clean water bottle, send it to a
proper lab and have the propertesting done. The main issue
with that is it takes a bit oftime. It might take a week or
two, and then when you get theresults back, if you haven't
(10:35):
studied up on your high schoolchemistry, you could have been
quoting someone. What does thismean? So that's, that's, I
think, the big challenge. I justhave a blanket answer. Email me
the PDF. Just email me the PDF,and I'll help you out. And I
know Joe and you and Sarah. I'mnot sure who's all done it, but
(10:55):
I know Joe on NDSU's website. Imean, there are how to interpret
a water quality test resultsthere. May you, maybe you have a
lot for your people as well. Sothere's these, these other
steps, but most people want totalk to someone. When they see
the test, they say, I want to, Iwant to hear someone's opinion
here.
Joe Ikley (11:11):
Yes, that's, that's page we keep in our guide. And I
think many people always, oftenrefer to it because the other
someone may call theiragronomist, or someone like Tom
and, well, yeah, a lot ofnumbers in my head. I'm on trade
show floor. Now, let me pullthat page up and make sure I'm
remembering this correctly.
Tom Wolf (11:30):
Yeah, for them, it's really, you know, it's really,
they want to have a no go or nogo answer. And you know, the
other thing too, is that thereis, of course, a utility
modifier market, right? We dohave water conditioners on the
market, and there are differentclaims, and maybe we'll get
there. Maybe you have a, youknow, we should leave that to
later, but there's always thiscounterbalancing of opinion. So
(11:53):
somebody says, you know, if youhave a question about your
water, add this product, andyour product and your problems
are solved. So is that actuallycorrect? What is the
professional opinion here? So wedo have to weigh in on some of
those assets in the most in mostcases, or other other products
that we don't know theingredients of, actually, but
you know, so it's a little bitof experience, little bit of
(12:14):
chemistry, little bit of justhelping people out that aren't
that familiar with it.
Joe Ikley (12:19):
And I do think, before we get into some of these
products and how to maybe modifyspray water, maybe take the step
here to talk about, you know,how does if you have this hard
water? So one of these numbersthat you mentioned are in the
concerning level, 700 or higher.How does that affect herbicide
performance? You know? Why isthat problematic when that
(12:40):
number is that high?
Tom Wolf (12:41):
Yeah, that's, that's a really important question. And
again, it's, unfortunately theanswer is kind of chemistry,
right? So most of our herbicidesare, in fact, weak acids. That
means they have a, basically anegative charge at some PHS, not
all PHS, and the pKa, of course,determines where that tipping
point is where, at lower belowthe pKa, they're mostly
(13:03):
protonated, which means they'renot Ionic, and then higher PHS,
they're deprotonated, whichmeans they're Ionic. And that
provides an opportunity forcations, positively charged
ions, to adhere and to bind, insome cases strongly, in some
cases very weakly, to theherbicide. And in that case, if
that, if they bind strongly, itchanges the herbicide shape
(13:25):
slightly. And the whole lock andkey, idea of mode of action like
basically enzyme binding site,lock and key, it doesn't fit
anymore different shape, doesn'tquite go in, doesn't inhibit the
enzyme that's the mate, and theway it works, and the products
that are most susceptible are,in fact, some of our most used
products. Glyphosate is numberone, by far, number one.
(13:46):
Glufosinate, Liberty other andnot another one. And then there
are some other weak acids,2,4-D, Amine is one. Dicamba
could be one. And then there aresome of the the dims, you know,
are, are are grass killer,sethoxydim, clethodim,
tralcoxidim, some of the, someof the older products that we no
(14:07):
longer use so much, the dims,have fallen a little bit out of
favor because of resistancedevelopment. But they're also
sensitive and but they're notsensitive necessarily to
hardness, they're sensitive tobicarbonates. So, you know,
there are, you have to know alittle bit. And I mean that that
basically sums it up, though,but I think most herbicides, to
some degree, will be, to somewill be somewhat susceptible to
(14:27):
that binding and thatinhibition, depending on the Ph
of your water.
Joe Ikley (14:33):
And perfect you know that with pH, because that was
kind of my next question of, Howdoes pH affect herbicides, the
pH or the water you're drawingout of, wherever you're drawing
water from,
Tom Wolf (14:44):
yeah, and it's such an important question, because the
aftermarket, I mean, let's faceit, I mean, there are basically
two main product groups that aresold for Water Conditioning. The
first one that we haven't evertalked about. Is ammonium
sulfate. So that is kind of thefertilizer where the sulfate can
bind with the antagonizingcations. Sulfates negatively
(15:08):
charged cations bind with it andthey form, usually a somewhat
less soluble or insoluble saltthat may precipitate out. And so
then the cation becomesunavailable. So that's really
the number one, and probably theone that we it's a kind of our
go to. It's generally available.It's not that expensive. It's
kind of a hassle because youhave to use a lot of it, but it
(15:30):
does dissolve easily in water.Can be available in liquid
forms. I don't want to coverthat off first. So it is still
our go to, but the aftermarkettends to go to the pH modifiers.
So it tends to and there aresome pH, some pH modifiers that
do, in fact, also bind to thecations, but there's not many.
(15:51):
The notable one is citric acid.Citric acid does bind or tie up
these cations. It also lowersthe pH, but propionic doesn't,
okay, it lowers the pH, but itdoesn't actually tie up. So we
have to be, you know, now we'regetting into chemistry, right?
Sulfuric acid, okay, it's not,it's not a weak acid, right? But
(16:11):
it does have self sulfate in it,so it will also do that. But the
real reason we have a concernabout the acids is that many of
our herbicides dissolve betterat high pH, not low pH. So we
have a solubility tank mixingissue that can create problems
in Canada and in the US alike.We are tank mixing always, and
(16:38):
we have to consider the mostlimiting member of that tank
mix, if it's a group two producta sulfonylurea,
triazolopyrimidines, you know,anything other than what's made
by BASF, The IMIs, then a low pHcan be harmful for tank mixing,
and it may, in fact, createproblems down the road. You're
kicking the can down the road.So, yeah, water quality, no
(17:01):
inhibition of glyphosate. Butnow tank clean out. Now you've
created a solution where thingsare possibly adhering to rubber
and plastic and and just noteasy to clean out anymore. Now
we have to solve that problem.How do we solve that? Usually,
with the pH adjustment. Get themback in solution. That's where
(17:22):
ammonia comes in. So, yeah,that's kind of where, where I'm
worried. And even some of theother modes of action have not
all members of these groups. Butthe classic example is
saflufenacil Sharpen in the US.It's an important product for
pre seed burn off and also indesiccation, and it dissolves
(17:46):
better at high pH. In fact, itworks better at high pH. There's
a recent paper in Weed Sciencethat showed some efficacy data.
So I think we ought to cast ournet a little wider than the
group twos and just make surewe're good with with everything.
Even some group 27 is all betterat high pH.
Joe Ikley (18:05):
So here's my first side tangent, just question I
got asked, and it's like, oh,that just sounds like a master's
project right there. But withwith some of our new spray
technology coming down the line,we can have the separate tank,
separate line system, andsomeone was asking me, well, if
I want to spray glyphosate andsharpen I know they're generally
(18:26):
better at different PHS, whatwould happen if I put them in
separate tanks and got the spraywater at the right pH within
each tank to make the mostsoluble? That's a very good
question. I don't believe Idon't know what happens.
Tom Wolf (18:39):
I know I have to draw on something that Peter Sikkema
once said. And Peter Sikkema asyou know, is retired professor
of wheat Science University ofGuelph so he has some opinions
on this, and not particularlythe two tank system, because
that's kind of a new thing. Buthe said to me once, so you've
got a water quality issue thatinhibits glyphosate, so you're
(19:00):
going to get an adjuvant. You'regoing to mix it in, make sure
it's dissolved, and then add theglyphosate, and then do all that
stuff. I says, Why don't youjust increase the rate of the
glyphosate? You've already gotit in your hand. It's
inexpensive, and the label is sowide, most of our most of our
uses, that are permitted athigher rates. And also it's
maybe cheaper than the utilitymodifier you're gonna put in
(19:22):
there. So I always kind of say,well, that's interesting, Peter.
I mean, it's not really, I don'treally like to recommend higher
herbicide rates. I don't knowwhy, but it's just in most
sometimes you could get offlabel a little bit on that. But
I kind of wonder whether,whether we can do some of that.
(19:46):
And, yeah, keep it simple. Youknow that if you look at see and
spray ultimate, this is the theproduct that's coming on stream,
pretty strong in some parts ofthe states now. Corn and soybean
country two tanks. But theintention isn't necessarily to
tie up, like to separate twodifferent solubilities. It's to,
(20:09):
it's to do a pre and a postsimultaneous, right and spots
for the post, but broadcast thepre and so I don't know whether
that's that's really the answer.It's an expensive solution to
the problem, in my opinion.
Joe Ikley (20:23):
And in this case, this particular person, they
were one to spot spray theirglyphosate and then have a
higher rate of Saflufenacil intheir broadcast to get some
residual as well. So they'rethey're just doing that pre
plant situation, but just tryingto see how they could best
utilize the system that theyhad.
Tom Wolf (20:44):
I like it, when you just described that to me. I
think that makes a lot of senseto me. If they have that kind of
a system, more power to them,you know. And you know, we also
have that, you know, it's directinjection. Doesn't really
address it, because that does gointo the same carrier stream,
and then the pH will beessentially same as it would
have been in the tank. But thetwo tank system, I mean, it's
(21:05):
really just John Deere seeingspray ultimate. And then, of
course, green eye Technologieshas it as well. One smart spray,
but they're all spot spray basedsystems. They're they're a
rather expensive way to do that.
Joe Ikley (21:18):
All right, it got off my attention. Forgot where I was
out of my actual list ofquestions,
Tom Wolf (21:23):
are you recommending, Sarah, that your clients do a
proper chemical water test andthat's properly analyzed and so
you have a good knowledge ofwhat what's in there? Or do you
have any other shortcuts thatyou use?
Sarah Lancaster (21:36):
No, So my you reassured me Tom, because yeah,
my standard answer is that, ifyou need to know what's in your
water, it's, in the long run,not that great of an expense to
get the sample set to. You know,there's a handful of labs down
here that will, will do that.So, yeah, that's, that's my
general recommendation, yeah.So, you know, we talk about,
(21:56):
especially if they got, like,new farms, new wells, that kind
of stuff.
Tom Wolf (22:00):
Yeah, one big change that we've seen here in the
last, say, five or maybeslightly more years has really
been the formation of Winfieldunited. That's really how
Winfield came into Canada. Imean, they were already, you
know, one of the largestdistributors in the US, and they
had a very strong program onwater conditioners. It's the
(22:24):
product here is called Crimson.It is an ammonium sulfate based
product. But they were thenramping up the, you know, the
marketing for it, and they madepeople aware. And of course,
they have a network, and theytalked about water quality. And
of course, the thing, thebrilliant stroke that they
pulled was that they used JohnNalewaja's formula, right? So
(22:44):
back in the day, John and hislab said, what is the actual
strength of each can in terms ofinhibiting, you know,
herbicides. And then hedeveloped a multiple regression
formula. So if you have the PPMof iron and magnesium and
calcium and potassium andsodium, and you just put that
(23:07):
into the formula, it tells youhow much ammonium sulfate to
add. And that has been abrilliant stroke, in my opinion.
So first of all, it's reallyuseful. But second of all, it
brings to mind these twoapproaches to water treatment
that we've always had in Canada.One of them is there's a certain
amount of water hardness thatwould just simply say we're good
(23:28):
with it. It's not a problem,like I mentioned it maybe, is it
200 maybe is it 300 I don't knowwhat it is, but below that, we
say, You know what, your wateris good. If you put a 200 part
per million water quality testinto the null wire formula, it
ends up with about a pound ofammonium sulfate per 100
gallons, or crimson or whatever,right? So basically, any water
(23:52):
sample will call for some AMS,right? It's a very good way to
get people to put that in thetank. They may may may or may
not benefit from it, to be quitehonest.
Sarah Lancaster (24:03):
So, so yeah, that's the question that that
comes next, right? Is, even ifyou can improve the water
quality, are you actuallyimproving weed control? Right?
There's some buffer built inthere in terms of, like
herbicide rates and the waterquality might not be the
limiting factor there.
Tom Wolf (24:20):
Very true. And, you know, there's the other really
interesting part of ammoniumsulfate. One of the reasons I
like to like to promote its use,to become honest, it has
ammonium in it, right? So, I wastaught undergrad Weed Science by
a professor from Scotland whowas on sabbatical. He replaced
(24:41):
Ian Morrison. His name wasGeorge Marshall, and in
undergrad, Weed Science at theUniversity of Manitoba, he
taught us about ion trapping.This was the 80s, right? And
he's talked about what ammoniumdoes, what its contribution is
in ion trapping. And to make along story short. It, the
(25:01):
presence of ammonium in thewater tank actually facilitates
the pH gradient across amembrane, which is driving force
of ion trapping and weak acidherbicides are the benefactors
of this, because they're chargedand they're they're more likely
to be negatively charged at highhigh PHS, and more likely to be
(25:23):
positive or neutral at low PHS.And therefore, you acidify the
outside wall, the membranethrough this proton pump, you're
more likely to cross thatmembrane if you're a herbicide,
and then you can't get back out.Deported when you're on the
inside and you're now, you're inthe symplastNow you got to
(25:43):
translocate. You have no choice.And you know, that's one of the
reasons that UAN URI ammoniumnitrate, it has ammonium in it
also sometimes works as anadjuvant, even though it doesn't
have sulfate. So I find thatthat little tidbit to be really
useful, like, what's thedownside of adding AMS if you
don't need it? There isn'thardly any, but there's an
(26:07):
upside. You just can't attributethe increased efficacy
necessarily to the tying up ofCations and it might be ion
trapping, right?
Joe Ikley (26:17):
The other part, I know Nalewaja would also preach,
and he also had a lot of lot ofwork with electron microscopes
and looking at weed leafsurfaces is you also don't know
which weeds are out there, whatthe cations on the leaf surface
might be. For instance,velevetleaf tends to have some
calcium on the leaf surface thathaving additional AMS in there,
(26:39):
or other products will help kindof overcome some binding up on
those leaf surface. Cations,yeah,
Tom Wolf (26:46):
is, is lambs quarters in that camp as well. Or I'm
mistaken about this mostlyvelvet leaf. I don't even
remember exactly, but, but
Joe Ikley (26:56):
lambquarters has a lot of stuff going on, but no
velvetleaf was the classic onewith calcium,
Tom Wolf (27:00):
gotcha, yeah, yeah. And I think in that case, yeah,
it doesn't matter what's in thewater, it's already, already on
the leaf, yeah.
Joe Ikley (27:10):
But that was a good way to get me back to find my
list. and, we were, we wereabout right there on track with
what I was mentioning, anyways,is some of the methods and
products to mitigate some issueswith poor spray water quality.
We've kind of talked aboutammonium sulfate, but you
alluded to some other productsearlier, and and some things to
discuss with some of those.Yeah,
Tom Wolf (27:30):
I mean, the the, you know, the the low the pH
modification modifiers are, youknow, they're interesting, but
again, it's a chemistry thing,you know, I look at the pKa, for
example, of glyphosate, it hasthree pKa, while it actually has
four. But one of them isirrelevant, but the pKa is are
(27:52):
pretty low, right? Two of thosethree, the three or four PKAs
are pretty low, which basicallymeans, if you want glyphosate to
be fully protonated andtherefore more oily, more oil
soluble. The pH has to go waydown. I mean, we're gonna have
to be at two, okay. I mean,that's very, very low. And even
(28:16):
if you're at four or five, youmight still have two of the of
the, you know, groups acidic,right, and Ionic. And so doesn't
take a lot of ionic character ona molecule like that to make it
completely water soluble. Imean, many herbicides are
completely water soluble. Havejust one acid group, right? And
(28:39):
glyphosate and glufosinate haveso many so you can protonate all
you want. They're still going tobe water soluble, and they're
still not going to make itacross the membrane that easily,
right? And so that's why I'mkind of think the the the
acidifies a little bit oversoldhere right now. I Are there
(29:03):
others that I'm missing? Whatare you hearing in terms of
effective non AMS, conditioners?Is there something, something
out there?
Joe Ikley (29:14):
Most of the ones that I get questions on, I mean, the
the other thing that became aninterest that three or four
years ago was products thatraised the pH, and this was
because of some label languageon on the Dicamba labels that we
use in soybean and cotton and inthe US, where basically said,
you know, we need to raise a pHabove a certain threshold and
(29:35):
top my head. I can't rememberit, but, and basically just
said, if your pH after you mixis below this contact your
extension specialists forproducts to use, we're all like,
wait a minute, besides a basicblend adjuvant. So it's kind of
like, well, there's, don't knowexactly what the marketplace is
(29:57):
for right now, but that was thatwas still chemistry. I mean, but
basically to avoid volatilityfrom Dicamba, so getting it
above a certain threshold pHwhere it would be less likely to
volatilize,
Tom Wolf (30:09):
right? And it was explicitly prohibited from using
AMS Dicamba, because AMS doesacidify slightly, and it just
enhanced the vapor loss fromfrom dicamba to such a degree,
yeah?
Joe Ikley (30:24):
And that also led to another class, you know, the of
the non nitrogen containingwater conditioners, to still try
and tie up some of those cationswithout acidifying the solution.
Again, kind of driven aroundminimizing the chance for
volatility.
Tom Wolf (30:40):
That's right, yeah. But you know, there are, what do
they call them? EDTA? What isthat? That's there's a term for
it. I've lost. It's themolecules that envelop and take
others out of solution in adifferent way. And so those are
(31:01):
also possible ways of doing it.And, you know, some of the
professional water conditionersmay have those in them, and
that's also obviously verybeneficial. Just getting back
to, you know, raising the pH, wedo have a number of products,
not just now, but alsohistorically on the Great
(31:25):
Plains. They're group twos,where ammonia was recommended as
an adjuvant to increasesolubility. And the classic one
that we still use is peroxylam.It's called simplicity. It's a
group two gramicide, also broadleaf killer. It has ammonium
hydroxide as a little jug in thein the box in Canada. And the
(31:47):
other instructions are, add theammonium hydroxide first, that
raises the pH, and that willincrease the likelihood that
that simplicity dissolves betterin the tank, and then you have
less clean out problems, right?Again, kicking things down, down
the road a little bit. So thatis still good. And so there are
label statements, or at leastsupplemental label statements,
(32:08):
in some cases, that guide youthere. And of course, there's
other ones, you know, if youremember anthem and Sundance,
the misstep by Monsanto about 20years ago, where they brought in
group twos that were highly pHdependent in the solubility. We
had carryover issues, likethere's no tomorrow, and they
actually withdrew those productsagain from from the Canadian
Prairies, but in the interim,they said, add ammonia to
(32:30):
increase the solubility. So butas I said, you know, like we
have more we have such complextank mixes. Now, because of
resistance, you you just have toknow what the solubility of each
of those components are and beguided by them, and then the
neutral PHS are, in fact, thesafest.
Joe Ikley (32:50):
And that the tank clean out is another important
one. Some of our herbicidelabels specifically say and get
to this certain pH when youclean out the tank, because to
get that better solubility, andmake sure we get it all, all the
surfaces on the tank and in thehoses and valves and everywhere
else.
Tom Wolf (33:08):
Yeah, what about longevity in the tank? Have you
done any work on that? Either ofyou on, you know, whether, if
we, see, have to quit because ofrain and are storing, you know,
1000 gallons in the tank thatdidn't get sprayed out, that's
already mixed. What is the pH?What is, what is the likelihood
(33:31):
of that to degrade and to beuseless in a few days?
Sarah Lancaster (33:34):
So I remember, when I was in grad school at
Texas a&m, there was a lab mateof mine that was looking at, I
think trifloxy Sulfur on right,is that staple? I think that's
staple. Maybe. I don't remember,I
Joe Ikley (33:48):
I don't know, it's cotton
Sarah Lancaster (33:48):
it's a cotton product. Exactly, yeah,
Tom Wolf (33:51):
what's cotton?
Sarah Lancaster (33:54):
Anyway? Mark was looking at three different
PHS and different time periods,and there was an effect and how,
how stable that molecule was inthe tank. I was looking it up as
I was kind of talking,
Joe Ikley (34:07):
I know, and I, I want people to find all the numbers
behind it, but it's one of thesethings that when I was at
Purdue. So one of thesequestions comes from every year,
because it's always, someonealways gets rained out in that
state, yeah, of glyphosate and agroup one, herbicide, I think it
was clethodim. Probably doesn'texactly matter, but, and, you
(34:28):
know, basically had rained outfor four days, you know what?
What's the probability of thatgroup one still being in there?
And I know the the extensionanswer that I had heard down
there at the time was, well,basically, if you're going to
want to add some more group oneback in so in that lower pH
environment, because glyphosateitself will drop the pH. So when
you store it that long, the highprobability of that group one
(34:51):
breaking down in storage.
Tom Wolf (34:54):
I found one label chlorimuron if you look at. The
label, it warns against eitherextreme pH due to alkaline or
acid hydrolysis and breakdown.But then I also found a table
that was compiled by someoneelse, I don't remember the name
(35:14):
on insecticides, which areusually listed as being
sensitive to alkalinehydrolysis, and the half life
was listed the of the probably15 or 20 insecticides on that
list. Most had half lives thatwere days long. Some had weeks
long half lives. And indeed, ifit was alkaline, the one half
(35:34):
life phosmate, I think it was,went to hours, but most were
still on the day range. But ofcourse, the recommendation is
that if you have something proneto alkaline hydrolysis, that you
should acidify the tank withwhen storing for prolonged
periods. I don't believe that wehave a lot of herbicide
candidates that fall in thatcategory. I've just not heard of
(35:56):
a complete loss of efficacy withan overnight store.
Joe Ikley (35:58):
No, I think the bigger issue would be if you got
a clear or clear poly tank andhave it out in the sun for those
couple of days while you'resitting there waiting for the
field to dry out some differentthings going on and get heated
up by the sun and get some UVrays shining in there.
Tom Wolf (36:17):
Exactly. Yeah, that's probably the bigger danger.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Ph may nothelp you there, yeah.
Joe Ikley (36:25):
So did we buy enough time for you to find that?
Sarah Lancaster (36:27):
I couldn't find it. I found the one where I
looked at absorption andtranslocation. But I know that
we were doing some justdissipation over time, stuff. I
can't, I can't find it. And itwas, it was staple Pyrithiobac,
not, I had the wrong AI.
Tom Wolf (36:42):
you know, you know, I don't want to complain about
marketing, but some products aresold, putting fear in people's
minds that if they don't acidifythe tank, it's going to be
useless tomorrow. And I justthink that we have to be a
little bit more diligent aboutchallenging those statements,
because they're being used tosell product that acidifies and
(37:03):
it creates other problems downthe road. And I just want to
make sure that we have the factshere.
Joe Ikley (37:09):
And the good thing is, well, the limiting factor
here to prove all these is timeon our end. But since it is
chemistry, a lot of this stuffcan be replicated inside if we
have the time and all the properingredients.
Tom Wolf (37:21):
Yeah and we shouldn't really have to do it frankly.
You know, the products thatwe're using are mature products.
They've been on the market, mostcases, for a long time already,
and the chemistry of these andtheir likelihood of breakdown
should be known. And you know, Ido use the WSSA publication a
lot that has the guide toherbicides, and it does have
(37:42):
solubilities and and half livesin some cases, but not in all.
But we really ought to. We havethe information the
manufacturers should beforthcoming with sharing it.
Joe Ikley (37:51):
So I'm shift gears here for the kind of the last
prepared question I had, becausethis, this is a follow up Tom
same, uh, same meeting a weekago or so as brought this up
because there's an interestingquestion of mine during a
drought year. And so the thegeneral question now going to be
specific when I was asked is,are there any water sources that
(38:14):
should simply be avoided forpesticide applications? And I
brought this up because during adrought I was, I got a call
from, actually, was up from inManitoba. Basically, I was given
two choices. I can draw from theRed River, and that time, it's
very tell me you're kind ofcloudy up there. So you can, you
know, the soil particles atleast, or industrial wastewater.
Tom Wolf (38:44):
I don't want to like I grew up in the valley, okay? And
for me to be pausing between theRed River and industrial waste
and have that moment where I'mnot sure which is better, that
doesn't reflect well on the reddoes it?
Joe Ikley (39:01):
Not by the time it gets that far downstream or
upstream, I guess.
Tom Wolf (39:04):
But no it's, it's suspended solids. That's the
issue here. I mean, yeah, itgoes through a couple of cities,
but, you know, we, we're doing,I hope, a half decent job of
treating that water. But what wewould, we sometimes talk about,
and I don't know whether, likeindustrial waste. I mean, that's
(39:24):
a Come on, who what? What ispossibly in there? It? Could
there be heavy metal? Who knowswhat's in that could be harmful
to the food we're growing? Imean, I would be very, very
reluctant to, you know, committo that. If we're looking at a
turbid water source that's runoff on clay land and it's
cloudy, there is a clarifyingsolution that we may have. It's
(39:47):
called aluminum sulfate. Now onour farm in the valley, we used
it and we had dugouts becauseour well water was very saline
and but we also sometimes hadcloudy water. So we would
shovel, literally, aluminumsulfate from a boat into the
dugout, and then therecommendation was to agitate
(40:11):
the dugout thoroughly. The onlyway you can really do that is
with an outboard motor. So wegot a little one, and we put it
on a little dinghy, and we justbasically drove it around, you
know, and got that thing mixedup. And after 24 to 48 hours,
believe it or not, that pondwater was significantly
(40:34):
clarified. So it's a little bitlike cream of tartar for anyone
who makes homemade juices. Itdoes the same. It's, it's a
coagulating agent. And so I'vemade up. When I lived in Ohio,
Frank Hall was invited hisexperience. He's an
entomologist. He was mysupervisor, him and Kent
(40:56):
Harrison down in Columbus. ButFrank's lab did Apple work. And
so they always had all thesecrates of delicious, wonderful
apples in the lab looking for,you know, disease and insect
damage, and then the untreatedones we took home, we ate them,
we dried them, and we madejuice, and we used cream of
tartar, and then clarified thejuice, right? So it was and
(41:19):
aluminum Sulfate does the samething. So that's an option for
some of the red river waters. Iguess it's not a solution for a
tank, because the sediment hasto be disposed of somewhere.
It'll resuspend itself. But itis a solution for a pond.
Joe Ikley (41:38):
That particular scenario I said, even though we
can see that there's stuff, wehave to condition when the water
point out of the red, I'd ratherdo that than the unknown of, as
you said, the unknown of thewastewater, what may be in
there.
Tom Wolf (41:53):
Yeah, exactly. You know, remember when we had a dry
couple years there? In 21 I gota call from Kim Brown, the
Manitoba weed specialist, andshe said, because our
reservoirs, our irrigationreservoirs, are really low, and
they had some surface and somedig out reservoirs near Morton
Winkler area, and they needrelied on them for irrigation,
they were wanting to conservewater, and wanted to prevent
(42:15):
farmers from using that water tospray their crops. And so this
is specific, suggested that thefarmers use industrial
wastewater, gray water of somesort. And I'm going, you know,
I'd rather ask the irrigators toirrigate one quarter inch less.
That would solve all of Manitobawater supply problems. For the
(42:37):
spraying does not use a lot ofwater, not in the big scheme of
Joe Ikley (42:41):
Now, if you're how many, what, 27,000 and change
things.
gallons of water in an acreinch, so a quarter of that
compared to we can cover a lotof ground with that savings.
Tom Wolf (42:52):
we spray all year long.
Joe Ikley (42:59):
All right? Dr Lancaster, any further questions
before we wrap this one up?
Sarah Lancaster (43:06):
I don't think so. I think it was a good
conversation. So thanks forjoining us. Tom,
Tom Wolf (43:11):
Yeah, my pleasure to be here, you know, and, and
it's, it's always great. I mean,I gotta pay homage to North
Dakota State on this one. Ithink you were fortunate enough
to have John, John Nalewaja, asa long standing faculty member
who really, really broke the iceon this discussion and did the
work and came up with solutions.And you know, that's the sign of
(43:32):
a of a true specialist that hasthe interests of farmers in
mind. Not just the problem isidentified, but the solution is
generated, and it has reallychanged how we spray. And it's a
tremendous, a tremendouslyvaluable impact. And I refer to
the North Dakota State weedcontrol guide, where many of the
research that John and his fall,his, you know, subsequent
(43:54):
replacements followed, and it'sterrific information. I
recommend to anyone listening tothe podcast to download the
North Dakota weed control guideand go to the appendix. Go to
the appendices some greatinformation there on water
quality and conditioning.
Joe Ikley (44:08):
We are still one of the few places that does offer
that for free as a PDF online,so it's always a benefit there.
But before we do go, want tomake sure the time you get the
chance to let people know wherethey can find, you know, a
couple different platforms wecan find you at and some of your
information.
Tom Wolf (44:27):
Yeah, I'm still on Twitter. I'm nozzle_guy on
Twitter, and so you can stillreach me there. I still check if
I have notifications. I'm nottweeting as much as I used to.
Some of us are reducing thatactivity slightly, but it was
great when it was hot. You canfind me on sprayers101.com.
Which is a website that JasonDeVoe, who is the weed
(44:48):
specialist, or the applicationspecialist for the province of
Ontario, run. It's a freewebsite. It's not a commercial
website. It's intended for theuse, use by practitioners. So
farmers. And so on. And we dohave some articles on water
quality. Some of them are guestarticles and and we're trying to
help out with with with the pHquestions, for example. And at
(45:10):
the bottom of the of the frontpage, you scroll down, you'll
see Tom at sprayers101.com,that's how you reach me. Jason's
also on there. You can reach himthat way as well.
Joe Ikley (45:20):
Perfect. Well, once again, Tom, thanks for coming
back on. Always great to havethis conversations with you.
Thank the audience again fortuning in, and we will catch you
on the next episode of the waragainst weeds.
As always, we thank you forlistening to the war against
(45:42):
weeds podcast. Just anotherreminder, you can find our
podcast hosted on the CropProtection Network, or CPN, for
short. So this is another greatresource that's driven by
extension, scientists atdifferent universities for pest
management. And with that, wewill see you next week on the
war against weeds podcast.
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