Diana, Just so we are using the same terms, you are not doing a drench just
a spraying. A drench is when you want to get the chemical down to the roots
and requires you saturate the mix with the chemical. With a spraying you
are spraying the leaves with a fine mist just to the point the chemical
starts to run off the leaves. Depending on a lot of things I would guess I
can spray 300 to 500 square feet of orchids with a gallon of spray. I can
drench maybe 30 square feet with a gallon.

Try a sprayer, you will be surprise how fast it goes. It is safer, you will
use much less spray, you will be exposed to the unmixed chemical less
(remember the unmixed chemical is something like 700 times more toxic that
the spray), the mix will be much more accurate(!!!), as Steve points out you
can focus on the plant being sprayed, and you will get better coverage. The
more accurate mix is reason alone not to use the hose end thing.

I once attended a demo where plants were sprayed with a UV mix with various
sprayers. After the spray dried, a black light was used to show how well
the sprayer covered the plant. The hose end sprayer gave the worst coverage
and used the most spray.

My sprayers of choice are Solo (both pumpup and backpack). Avoid the cheap
ones, they do not make a good spay pattern and are just junk.

Pat

"Steve" wrote in message
...
Diana Kulaga wrote:
Thanks for responding, Pat, as usual. I imagine the hose end device is
less accurate than an actual measure, but when you're doing a drench for
all these plants, isn't it unwieldy to use a gallon pump? I'd be
refilling it constantly, no?...............................

Does your gallon sprayer have a hose and spray wand or is the spray nozzle
attached to the top of the tank? If you have a hose, I think you should
try a batch in your sprayer anyway. I have nearly as many plants as you,
and I spray them with Cleary's in the summer (outside). I use a 3 gallon
pump up sprayer which I usually only fill to about 2 gallons. Two gallons
pretty much covers everything. I tend to thoroughly spray the plants that
have a history of fungus problems. The others get sprayed, but I don't
take much care about covering every surface.

Steve