Herbicide Spot Spraying - green on green

Docks gone, grass untouched

A dry summer held the grass back on this 11.65-hectare field at Court Farm, a dairy farm in Herefordshire, while the docks kept growing. Their deep taproots reach water the grass can’t, and every dock that spreads takes ground from the sward. A blanket spray would have hit every square metre, docks or not, and set the struggling grass back even further.

Edward Wardroper, who works for the UK CultiWise partner Tallis Amos, flew the field by drone on 14 August. CultiWise picked out each dock plant and turned the detections into a prescription map, which went through John Deere Operations Center to the contractor’s Mazzotti sprayer. On 7 September its 0.5 m nozzles opened only over the docks.

Spraying the whole field at about €72 per hectare would have cost €835. The sprayer treated 1.5 hectares, so the herbicide bill came to €108, or €9.24 per hectare spread across the field. All costs are converted from pounds sterling at the 27 October 2026 rate (£1 = €1.19). The other 10.15 hectares never saw a drop.