Weed Wiper

Had the 10ft Speidel weed wiper for years. Tried it a few times, and was never happy with it. Get on a bit of a grade, all the herbicide would run down to one end of the pipe, leaving the other end dry.
Did some reading and thinking. Put the wiper on the back of the carryall. Bought some 3/8" ID soaker hose from TSC. Rural King had these cheapo sprayers for $49. Some hose and fittings and plenty of cable ties...
First time, had the soaker hose divided up into 2.5ft sections with a t fitting in the middle, essentially a 5ft hose. Behaved like the Speidel, all the herbicide ran downhill. Replaced the t's with elbows. Soaker hose is positioned so it drips down the front of the old Speidel.
You can see the bypass from the t just below the pump. Put a needle valve in the line to the wiper to control flow. Couldn't get accurate enough flow with the ball valve, so using it for a shutoff. In hindsight, could have built a platform and maybe used gravity feed, but thats hindsight for you.
The long piece of pvc is to make a hump so gravity will even out flow between all lines. Pvc conduit "clamps" to hold the line down.
Takes 20 minutes to go through 1 gallon of water, at a steady but slow drip. Even all the way across the wiper. Just have to figure out glyphosate concentration and speed. Going to start with gallon of glyphosate to 9 gallons water, about 4mph, see how it goes.
Thoughts and suggestions welcome

If you pull it you will miss most of the weeds in the tire tracks. You need to push it ahead of the machine to get the weeds. A hydraulic cylinder with a level on the wiper would solve you problem for keeping the liquid to the length of your pipe.

what kind of weed are you trying to
control?

I like the zip ties to hold the mesh on.
That the same fix I used.

Interesting design. If you use a herbicide like crossbow, you will kill the weeds but the drips won't kill the grass.

Ironweeds

Retired electrician...use cable ties for EVERYTHING.

And note the mineralacs holding the wiper to the angle iron...again, retired el.

Fred,

I hope you have better results with your weed wiper than I have had. Maybe you have some tips that I could incorporate to make mine more efficient.

I have mixed grass, primarily fescue that I use for hay. My bane is Johnson Grass. It grows very fast and very high. The mature Johnson Grass has thick stiff stalks in it. If I can get the Johnson Grass baled when it is young, before the thick stalks develop, I can bale and use it okay. But I don't want the mature Johnson Grass in my hay bales. I have my wiper mounted on my front end loader so I can raise or lower it depending on the height of the fescue. I use Roundup in my wiper.

My dilemma is that, although the Roundup kills the Johnson Grass, the dead grass is still standing in the hay. So, if I bale the hay, I have the dead grass with the thick stalks in my bales. I think that I simply need a different solution for my particular problem.

Tom in TN

I don't disagree.

This was quick, and a way to see if I could get a wiper to kill weeds.

Thats what I bought the weed wiper for many years ago, johnson grass.

Never did get a good kill on it.

Stalks...I use all my hay, so except for the drying time issue, my cows just throw it out of the bale ring.

we had one of the old school rope wicks as we called them. It was 2 in PVC so I cut the caps off the end and glued 90s with a foot of pipe going up so it stayed full on hills and added volume.

Haven't seen any articles regarding using crossbow in a wiper.

If it would work, I'd be all for it. Wouldn't have to worry about drips killing grass. Although I'm not too worried about drips, fescue sod fills back in pretty quickly.

Have you used or read anything about using crossbow in a wiper? Concentration rates, etc.

Thanks

Instead of one long 10ft wiper, I used 2 --5ft rope wick wipers, 5 inch diameter. When full they are much less impacted by slope and the
sloshing on hay ground keeps the wicks wet.