4/9 & 4/10 2010

Well, the cab vines seem to have perked up some and most all of them seem to be growing again, with a couple of exceptions.  I'll keep watching them, but whatever seems to have affected the leaves and given them "pause" seems to have passed, I hope.

I did manage to spray on Saturday, so maybe that had an effect, though I can't be sure.

Speaking of spraying, getting it done was quite a challenge because my sprayer seems to have developed issues over the winter.  Tried to go out and get it done Friday night (the 9th), but when I turned the sprayer on with water only, liquid gushed from a 4" crack that had formed in the handle of the spray wand.  Went to Atwoods and picked up a pair of new ones and hooked one up, only to find that the Y adapter coming out of the pump was cracked and spurting water too.  I didn't need to the feed to the boom, so I hooked the handheld wand tube straight into the pump and that seemed to get things working fine.  By then it was too late to spray, so I called it quits for the night.

Next morning, I came out and put my chemicals in as follows:

2 lbs of Manzate ProStick
20 tablespoons of Sulphur
28 ounces of Sevin concentrate

Got over to the first plant and found the sprayer wouldn't turn on!  Fiddled with it for a few minutes and every time I'd flip the switch, it would spurt for a second and stop.  THEN the connector for the wand slipped off and sprayed the mix all over me and the mower :(

After this going on repeatedly for a while, I finally figured out two things:

• The pump switch has a short.  I have to ease it over to the 3/4 position and it stays on. Need to replace it.

• The clamp connecting the tube to the wand is too loose.  Need something stronger.  Otherwise I'm unable to use the trigger because everytime I release it, the pressure shoots the tube off and pours mix everywhere.  

So I had to leave the trigger on the whole length of every row and use the pump switch to shut off the spray between rows.  A waste of mix that way, but it got the job done this time.  Barely.  Frustrating...
Last thing I did was put deer-off on the perimeter rows again since we'll be out of town a few days.

This is what the cab looked like Saturday: