Crop Dusting canals
 

Has anybody hired a crop dusting service to spray hyacinth in the canals near Grand Chenier? Who sprays in the area and what would something like that cost? Even an airboat with a spray rig would probably help. The only issue with that is it states "no airboats" on the lease agreement.


We dropped the ball this year and now we can't make it to our ponds. We flew over last weekend and about 80% of a 2-1/2 mile canal leading to our section is basically impassable. You can see the little trail on how far we were able to make it with 2 Prodrives before giving up. This stuff is like a floating land mass, and no telling what all this high water will do to it now.

There are aerial herbicide companies in SE Texas that can do this. Have used them several years back for spraying clearcuts. They use helicopters with a boom sprayer, BUT they would likely need permission from the landowner first. They are also very cautious about spraying on the edges of anything such as roads and property lines, so that they dont get drift into neighboring properties. Its also pretty expensive. Will see if I can dig up who it was that we used

I would first talk to whomever you lease from and see if they will allow you to do this with an airboat and do it yourself

Thanks for the response Duck. I'll email the owners today and see if they make exceptions for airboats if we are spraying. Any idea where I can rent an airboat if they allow it? Some coon@$$ out there want to work for gas and beer? LOL :cheers:

We used Progressive. Not sure if they are still around as that was a few years back. Cant find the price per acre but there is for sure a minimum price just to get them to come out whether its 1 acre or 1000. Each time they would push the spray button, it would record on GPS. So at the end, they gave us a nice map of their spray path.

No idea on an airboat. Someone here might can help if you give them a case of beer:)

From what I saw on I-10 yesterday, all the airboats are headed to Texas.

Saw a lot of smaller aluminum boats with outboards and surface drives too.

Congrats to these guys, there are a lot of people in need.


This post is not intended to hijack...

a good mudboat or a crawfish skiff with a lilly keel and a big outboard will chop a path thru that stuff to where you can get around. or a dual prodrive if you know someone with one.

those would be your cheapest options.

a single prodrive and a couple days to work on it will get a path down the center, but it will be a lot of work. that's how I used to keep up with our trails. i'd just drink beer and chop a path. lol

good luck

Matt, with that storm surge you might get some salt water back washinginto your canals. Takes a little time but that salinity will kill the hyacinths. Is your lease off of the Superior north of the highway?

All depends on what you spray and how much you spray. We spray all the time by air plane.
Call O'Brians flying service in Iowa and they will spray down there. You got to get the chemical across the road from G&H seed. They could tell you how much chemical and at what rate to use.

Need to know what your spraying as far as plants go.

If it's just water hyacinth then you could do 2-4D and some generic glyphosate would do the trick.

.5-1 gallon an acre would take care of it.


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It sure is. I hate to even think about it like that due to so many suffering, but the storm could potentially help out with the situation.


Thanks Meat Killer. The canal is about 2-1/2 miles long and 110' wide. My calculation is it's close to 30 acres total. It's mostly all hyacinth in there.

A plane can do that quickly and relatively cheap. Might be hard to kill the vegetation in canal without killing those trees as well. Most flying services around here will spray marsh. Helicopters seem to be a good bit more expensive.

Like someone above said, with all this rain and water, some of it may have washed out.

call Scooter Trosclair at Rockefeller refuge. he may know how to help you. I hired a helicopter once and it was about $700 per acre. but that was with multiple customers. Scooter can lead you in right direction.

Scooter will tell you exactly what to spray and how much of it to spray. He has helped us out a lot and saved us some mo et along the way at my farm. Good guy.


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anyone seeing any teal down around Pecan Island G Chenier area? looks like we caught 15ins of rain or so.... got pumps running so hopefully its not too deep for them to feed

We decided to round up a few more boats and give it another go before pulling the trigger on hiring someone to spray for us. It took a while and I'm sore as Hell, but we made it! After the path was cut we ran up and down the trail several times to widen it some and then sprayed the Hell out of it with some 2,4-d.

Looks like hard work and a bunch of it.