Clearing rushes

Get a 2L jug put water in the tank set it up turn it on and measure the output of one nozzle for 60 seconds. 3 bar woukd be high IMO

Count the number of nozzles and multiply by amount of water. You now have the amount of spray the sprayer put out in 60 seconds.

You then find out your tractor speed in KM at the difference gears. Usually most lads aim for 80-100L/acre.......200-250/HA.

If you are travelling at 5km/hour with a 10M boom you travel 83M in a minutes and. cover 830sqM. A hectare ( 2.5 acres approx) is 10000 sqM . At that speed it takes about 12 minutes to cover a HA. You want the sprayer to deliver 250-300 L in that time frame.

About 600ml aka about a bit more than a pint, add about an egg cup of fairy. If you go any stronger with the mortone you'll start to burn the grass too or badly stunt the grass.

Mortone is slower acting and really only works well on weak rush that has been topped earlier in the year. Spray August/September and leave them over the winter (don't cut them) to die off

Blue nozzles at 3 bar pressure and travelling at 6km/h will deliver 240 litres per ha or 100 litres per acre. Use that as your guide to set up and you won't go to far wrong. Only fails if the nozzles are worn out and over time they will as the nozzle hole will get bigger.

If you want a permanent fix then you have to drain the water away otherwise all you will do is control rather than eradicate rushes...its a costly job but you'll do it once

After that you need to work on ph & soil fertility & rush will disappear.

Half the 10l drum of agritox, to 400l, have the tractor a bit higher than ticking over. And go as fast as you can in the rough ground.

We are under pressure to hold onto MCPA as an agri chemical. It a great weedkiller. However the amount of chemical on the foil that seals the drum of MCPA if it gets into a stream traces can be detected 20KM down stream.

We are under pressure with it being detected in streams and rivers adjacent to wet land. If you want to hold onto it as a spray for rushes and for other weeds be f@@king careful how, when and where you use it.

You will miss it when it's gone

Best practise when spraying needs to be promoted.

I spray at 120 litres of water per acre. 1 litre MCPA per acre. Using standard blue nozzles, I drive at 8KPH at 3 bar pressure. One 420 litre sprayer covers 3.5 acres.

A typo above. Edited there to 8kph per hour.

You must be a patient man or are you thinking in miles per hour? 3.5kph is a lot slower than walking pace. With a 12 metre sprayer at that speed and allowing for headland turns you’d be only covering 8-9 acres per hour. I’d fall asleep in the tractor at that pace!

13 kph spreading fert here with a 24 metre spreader and I find it a good speed in smaller fields but in bigger flat fields it’s still a bit slow but it’s the speed where I know all the rates 100% accurate so I stick with it.

I was thinking that alright!

And these.

Once you get them killed, I find Urea is great stuff to keep them gone, provided the field isn't waterlogged half the year, in that case proper drainage is the only long term solution.

I reseeded a few very wet fields10 or 12 years ago. It's right next to the bog. There is a special seed mix for poor land but I didn't like it. I found the normal grass seed better. I would have always sown rape the first year and by the time you are tilling the following summer, the roots of the rushes would be gone. The land is still super wet because i didn't think it was worth spending thousands on drainage., but the rushes never came back. I think the reason is that I give it plenty fert. Sometimes it could be 1st June before I get to spread but it would get a bag of urea and then 2 bags of compound later in the summer.

The man next door is always remarking on how I have no rushes. He bought a weed licker and it gets plenty use!