Find tips and “best practices” to get top results and avoid catastrophe when tank mixing.
Tank mixing is a common practice for growers to utilize tank mixing to save on time, money, and effort. However, according to a Southeast FarmPress article, mixing chemicals in a tank without care can result in the “tank-mix blues.” Incorrectly mixing fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides, and other inputs can lead to reduced performance and crop injury. There are a few fast-and-hard rules and tips that can help to ensure tank mixing doesn’t result in damage to your crops. See the details below.
Tank Mixing Tips
According to the article, factors such as “the chemicals, GPA, air temperature, time of day, relative humidity, leaf wetness, and overall crop health” will all affect how a crop responds to a tank mixture. Guidelines from the article include:
- “Any person who tells you that they know exactly what will happen with a specific tank-mixture on any given day is full of poultry litter” (the author included).
- “The more stuff that you put in the tank, the more stuff that can go wrong.”
- “Mixing problems are more likely to occur at lower-water volumes (10 GPA vs 15 GPA).”
- “Mixing sequence/order is extremely important.”
The correct mixing order (usually—see the article here for exceptions) is:
- water soluble bags (WSB)
- water soluble granules (WSG)
- water dispersible granules (WG, XP, DF)
- wettable powders (WP)
- water based suspension concentrates/aqueous flowables (SC, F)
- water soluble concentrates (SL)
- suspoemulsions (SE)
- oil-based suspension concentrates (OD)
- emulsifiable concentrates (EC)
- surfactants, oils, adjuvants
- soluble fertilizers
- drift retardants
The article recommends the Mix-Tank (Precision Laboratories) app to help with proper tank mixing.
Griffin Fertilizer is committed to helping both growers and ranchers make sound agronomic and economic decisions in order to maximize the health of their grove and pasture. As a full-service custom dry & liquid fertilizer blender and crop protection product distributor, we will continue our mission to further advance Florida agriculture. For questions or concerns about your farm or pasture, contact us and one of our team will be in touch.
Photo courtesy of Joe Thomissen.