Hose End Sprayer

[Queenslander]

Does anyone use the hose end sprayer for fertilizing orchids? I would love your opinions on this method.

[Ray]

They work great - as long as you get a decent one.

Many work by injecting water into the canister, thereby forcing the fertilizer or pesticide into the spray stream. Because of that design, the concentration changes with time, becoming more- and more-dilute; not a good thing.

A better one will use a siphon mechanism instead, maintaining a constant concentration throughout the application. Even with that, however, the mixing ratio can change, depending upon your water pressure and flow rate. I suggest the following "calibration" methodology:

1. Set it up as you intend to use it - specific hose and spigot.
2. Fill the canister with a known volume of water containing food coloring (to make it easier to see).
3. Place the sprayer so its output goes into a bucket of known volume (typically a 5-gallon one is used here in the US), and turn on the water.
4. Keep track of the amount of output collected (it pays to have 2 buckets, so you can dump one while the other fills) until the canister is empty.

From that you can calculate the mixing ratio - for example, if one liter of "concentrate" produced 20 liters of spray, from that point forth, you can simply mix up your concentrate at 20x your desired final concentration, and you're good to go!

Such a procedure is also good for "Hozon" proportioners, which even though they are rated at having a 1:16 ratio, I have seen go anywhere from 1:20 to 1:12.

[keithrs]

I use 4 gph fogg-it nozzles and 1000 hole red head nozzle for big pots/plants.

My system works like this.... Supply water gos to my ro system. Than the ro water gos to my 50 gal reservoir which has a float valve. After that I have a 120v inline pump T'ed that hook to my hose where I have a wand that I have quick disconnects for the nozzles. The other end of the 'T' gos to my misting system. I use a pressure switch to turn the online pump off/on and a sprinkler system valve on a timer for my misting system. The one big problem I found is that I'll mix my fertilizer for a full reservoir, but as I start to water the ro system will kick in and dilute the fertilizer. So, I'm thinking I will put a ball valve @ the outlet for the reservoir and 'T' in a separate reservoir with ball valve for fertilizing.... Or go to a dosing pump. Other than that.... The system works well. I was going to use a submersible pump put feared that it would not have enough head pressure to get all 10 foggit nozzles to spray right on the misting system.

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[keithrs]

I tried the hozon and didn't like it at all. It dropped the head pressure way down. Instead of getting 1000 soft little streams, I got one hard stream that blow the mix out of the pots. I had to put the nozzle on the mix. Good for fertilizing veggies with a water breaker tho....

[Queenslander]

Thank you very much Ray. I will try on the weekend.Regards

[Queenslander]

Thank you Keith for your help. Yes, I can see the problems with using a Hoseon. Have a great day.Regards.