View on the need for water conditioners ?

faircomment

Member
Arable Farmer
Hi , looking for some first hand experience from people using water conditioners and some examples of how much water conditioners use has improved effectiveness of glyphosate in particular ?
 

faircomment

Member
Arable Farmer
Yes rainwater harvest is going to be my non chemical control . interested to hear from anyone using water conditioners in a hard water area .
 

Farmersboy

Member
Location
South Lancashire
I have been using a water softener on the supply to my bowser for 25 years. Think it helps in most situations but have found the last couple of years that glyphosate or Kyleo has been disappointing on cover crop fodder radish in particular. Rainwater is the next recommendation, we’ve got more than plenty of that at the moment. Just need to catch enough of it
 

faircomment

Member
Arable Farmer
I have been using a water softener on the supply to my bowser for 25 years. Think it helps in most situations but have found the last couple of years that glyphosate or Kyleo has been disappointing on cover crop fodder radish in particular. Rainwater is the next recommendation, we’ve got more than plenty of that at the moment. Just need to catch enough of it

Even in Lancashire Farmersboy ? I thought you would typically have soft water in the area
 

Richard III

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
CW5 Cheshire
I have been using a water softener on the supply to my bowser for 25 years. Think it helps in most situations but have found the last couple of years that glyphosate or Kyleo has been disappointing on cover crop fodder radish in particular. Rainwater is the next recommendation, we’ve got more than plenty of that at the moment. Just need to catch enough of it

I've had similar issues, after a cock up with radish regrowing in spring beans, I would only include radish where there is an option to take them out in the following crop now. :(
 
Had a problem with high bicarb water tying up the constituents of my foliar feed slug repellent/controller even using acidifiers which work perfectly north of Durham.
Answer so far although not definitive as not enough feedback is to use Reactor/ Reactor lite. Add in until water turns green then its both acidified and conditioned.
Ideally use a litre glass jug on a windowsill of your water and syringe in 0.25ml increments. Give it a stir, wait a minute before adding more. 0.25ml - 1.0ml/ ltr = 0.25ltr - 1.0ltr/ 1000ltr of spray. 20p -80p /ha @ 100ltr/ha spray rate.
 
I have been using a water softener on the supply to my bowser for 25 years. Think it helps in most situations but have found the last couple of years that glyphosate or Kyleo has been disappointing on cover crop fodder radish in particular. Rainwater is the next recommendation, we’ve got more than plenty of that at the moment. Just need to catch enough of it

I keep trying to tell folk, that hard/soft water matters not, glyphosate doesn't have the tallow in it any more and it is going to continue to throw up interesting results unless some kind of supplementary additive is used.
 

Case140

Member
Arable Farmer
Location
Wicklow, Ireland
I keep trying to tell folk, that hard/soft water matters not, glyphosate doesn't have the tallow in it any more and it is going to continue to throw up interesting results unless some kind of supplementary additive is used.
Can you explain please? I thought hard v soft was an issue. How much an issue is the ph in your opinion?
(bearing in mind that hard water in our area usually has a lot of lime so ph is high)
 

faircomment

Member
Arable Farmer
Still interested for anyone’s views on there experience with water conditioners , particularly in use with glyphosate . Would also be interested to hear about its uses with any other pesticide and reasonings . Ollie989898 , interested to hear your reasons for glyphosate not being so effective even when applied with soft water ?
 
Still interested for anyone’s views on there experience with water conditioners , particularly in use with glyphosate . Would also be interested to hear about its uses with any other pesticide and reasonings . Ollie989898 , interested to hear your reasons for glyphosate not being so effective even when applied with soft water ?
Many years ago had a client in Northumberland who started harvesting rainwater.
His comment was that until then he did not realise that Roundup killed OSR stems all the way down rather than just the top third of the plant.
As quoted before in very hard water Glyphosate has a half life of 30 minutes and Pyrethroid a half life of 10 minutes so just work out what dose rate you are applying by the time you get to the end of the field.
I believe a lot of "resistance" problems are down to this factor.
 
Still interested for anyone’s views on there experience with water conditioners , particularly in use with glyphosate . Would also be interested to hear about its uses with any other pesticide and reasonings . Ollie989898 , interested to hear your reasons for glyphosate not being so effective even when applied with soft water ?

The amount of cations or subsequent pH of water does have a big effect on the efficacy of materials like glyphosate. In fact, I suspect it has a bigger bearing on many pesticides than we actually realise, but then given the legions of fine print on just about every pesticide container label it's no surprise that we gloss over the fact. My earlier post was slightly miss-worded, I meant to point out that the quality of your water is now unimportant, everyone should be using an adjuvant in my view.

A number of posters on this forum have begun mentioning peculiar results with glyphosate in particular, where things like OSR volunteers were not dying. One can only assume that they have not suddenly given up on water conditioners or changed their water sources. I too have had the odd phone call in the past about: 'your roundup didn't work every well'. The reason is simple, the manufacturers wee obliged to remove the tallow amine from their formulations.

In the past I used to use some very good premium glyphosate products, which were not dirt cheap and I never used an adjuvant with them. This is Somerset which generally has hard water and it was usually spraying off god-awful things like permanent pasture. Conversely, where I used the cheaper glyphosate products, at equal dose rates, I always used an adjuvant without fail. The reasons for this were made manifestly clear to me because when I first started out it I assumed that 'it's round up and it will work'. After a handful of indifferent results, I learned my lesson.

Now you have to put in adjuvants to get the stuff to work properly, I've seen it, farmers have seen it, and we will continue to see it. Glyphosate will kill grasses just by waving the can in their general direction. They were always the first to die where it was applied. But full on perennial weeds, which often aren't a feature in arable stubbles, are a totally different matter. I've seen entire grass leys die very nicely but the docks survive because of glyphosate being taken for granted. And this is at maximum rates, too.

The cost of these adjuvants, is small fry compared to the issues caused by products not working correctly. Whatever product people decide to use is up to them but I have never had any issues where Li-700 was used and would have no hesitation recommending it. X change is also another very good product from a good manufacturer.
 
Many years ago had a client in Northumberland who started harvesting rainwater.
His comment was that until then he did not realise that Roundup killed OSR stems all the way down rather than just the top third of the plant.
As quoted before in very hard water Glyphosate has a half life of 30 minutes and Pyrethroid a half life of 10 minutes so just work out what dose rate you are applying by the time you get to the end of the field.
I believe a lot of "resistance" problems are down to this factor.

Absolutely. It has to be one of the most thoroughly abused products on the market and I can imagine other materials being similarly treated.
 

DanniAgro

Member
The amount of cations or subsequent pH of water does have a big effect on the efficacy of materials like glyphosate. In fact, I suspect it has a bigger bearing on many pesticides than we actually realise, but then given the legions of fine print on just about every pesticide container label it's no surprise that we gloss over the fact. My earlier post was slightly miss-worded, I meant to point out that the quality of your water is now unimportant, everyone should be using an adjuvant in my view.

A number of posters on this forum have begun mentioning peculiar results with glyphosate in particular, where things like OSR volunteers were not dying. One can only assume that they have not suddenly given up on water conditioners or changed their water sources. I too have had the odd phone call in the past about: 'your roundup didn't work every well'. The reason is simple, the manufacturers wee obliged to remove the tallow amine from their formulations.

In the past I used to use some very good premium glyphosate products, which were not dirt cheap and I never used an adjuvant with them. This is Somerset which generally has hard water and it was usually spraying off god-awful things like permanent pasture. Conversely, where I used the cheaper glyphosate products, at equal dose rates, I always used an adjuvant without fail. The reasons for this were made manifestly clear to me because when I first started out it I assumed that 'it's round up and it will work'. After a handful of indifferent results, I learned my lesson.

Now you have to put in adjuvants to get the stuff to work properly, I've seen it, farmers have seen it, and we will continue to see it. Glyphosate will kill grasses just by waving the can in their general direction. They were always the first to die where it was applied. But full on perennial weeds, which often aren't a feature in arable stubbles, are a totally different matter. I've seen entire grass leys die very nicely but the docks survive because of glyphosate being taken for granted. And this is at maximum rates, too.

The cost of these adjuvants, is small fry compared to the issues caused by products not working correctly. Whatever product people decide to use is up to them but I have never had any issues where Li-700 was used and would have no hesitation recommending it. X change is also another very good product from a good manufacturer.
Sounds good, and I've had some poor results, so which adjuvants should we use?
 
Sounds good, and I've had some poor results, so which adjuvants should we use?

I've not tried some huge exhaustive list of adjuvants I'm afraid so I'm the wrong person to ask. Whatever product you can buy reasonably provided it has a good technical fit. X change I've had no issues with at all but there are probably 2 dozen products in the marketplace and I have only tried a handful.
 

SFI - What % were you taking out of production?

  • 0 %

    Votes: 81 42.2%
  • Up to 25%

    Votes: 68 35.4%
  • 25-50%

    Votes: 30 15.6%
  • 50-75%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 75-100%

    Votes: 3 1.6%
  • 100% I’ve had enough of farming!

    Votes: 7 3.6%

Red Tractor drops launch of green farming scheme amid anger from farmers

  • 1,294
  • 1
As reported in Independent


quote: “Red Tractor has confirmed it is dropping plans to launch its green farming assurance standard in April“

read the TFF thread here: https://thefarmingforum.co.uk/index.php?threads/gfc-was-to-go-ahead-now-not-going-ahead.405234/
Top