Spartan Mowers Releases 2025 Product Lineup
Jessica Schwartz
Envu Reintroduces Its Lawn Care Advisory Board, Announces Members
Envu is reintroducing its Lawn Care Advisory Board, a group of influential lawn care operators from across the U.S. who will partner with Envu to create a stronger, better industry by providing expertise and critical feedback on important turf topics and products. The Envu Lawn Care Advisory Board represents a cross-section of the lawn care industry with members from companies of different sizes, locations, and service offerings. This diverse group of board members meets and communicates with each other several times throughout a two-year term. They focus on emerging trends, developing new best practices, and discussing ways to strengthen the industry. The seven members of the Lawn Care Advisory Board include: Chris Angelo is the president and CEO of Stay Green in Santa Clarita, CA. He has a history of working in the facilities services industry with strong business development skills. Brian Benedict is an area manager for Pacific Landscape Management in Hillsboro, OR. He has more than 40 years of industry experience and is the account manager for Nike headquarters. Kevin Blanks is the founder and president of Superior Spray Service in Lakeland, FL. He has been part of the industry for more than 25 years. Blanks is also an expert in pest control, serving customers on a daily basis. Ed Fleming is the owner and president of Lawns Unlimited in Milton, DE. He has extensive knowledge of herbicides, weeds, and insects. Fleming has been in the industry for more than 30 years, creating beautiful and healthy lawns for ...
Lishman/Manterra Collaboration Produces Fully Autonomous Unmanned GPS Sprayer
In a world of self-driving mowers, cars, and even snowplows, the call for the precision and reliability of GPS controlled tools is sweeping across all industries, especially the landscape business. For compact sprayer manufacturers Martin Lishman Ltd, their venture into the world of autonomous spraying became a reality when they were approached by UK based precision equipment specialist, Manterra Ltd. The plan was to mount a Martin Lishman Mini-Spray 125 liter demount sprayer with 3.5m boom on their XAG R150 fully autonomous utility vehicle and create a go-anywhere unmanned GPS controlled spraying system. “We were struggling to find a UK based manufacturer who could fill all our requirements for lead time, quality, specification and value,” explains Andrew Manfield, managing director of Manterra Ltd. “Martin Lishman were able to fulfill all our requirements regarding these critical aspects, worked closely with us to meet our needs and were always responsive to our requests.” The XAG and Mini-Spray combo provides a robust and versatile ground-based platform, which offers a variety of spraying capabilities at an affordable level. It utilizes the Trimble control system to deliver a full suite of variable rate application and targeted application solutions using Trimble Weedseeker sensors. The use of the unmanned sprayer vehicle brings many benefits. From a safety perspective, operators have greater separation from chemicals when the sprayer is in use. Additionally, from an environmental stand-point, the battery vehicle is quieter and lighter than typical UTV’s or tractors, minimizing disturbance, and ground pressure. “Field tests have been run ...
New Mosquito Control To Start Further U.S. Field Trials
As Summer mosquitoes make their annoying presence known, scientists at Valent BioSciences LLC are working on a new pesticide to battle the disease carriers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recently granted Valent an Experimental Use Permit (EUP) to perform further field studies of VBC-60748, a new mosquito space spray targeting pyrethroid-resistant adult mosquitoes. VBC-60748 is the first-ever mosquito adulticide that contains an active ingredient based on a soil bacterium. The active ingredient is manufactured through fermentation and the product would be the first new U.S. adulticide mode of action approved in 50 years. Pyrethroid resistance is a worldwide public health threat that limits the ability to control disease-carrying adult mosquitoes. Resistant mosquitoes spread deadly and debilitating diseases such as malaria, West Nile virus, dengue, yellow fever, zika and others. Disease-vectoring mosquitoes have developed mechanisms that shield them from the insecticidal activity of pyrethroids, one of the most important classes of insecticides for mosquito abatement. Valent BioSciences’ novel adulticide combines three active ingredients and three modes of action to achieve a high level of mortality against these resistant populations across multiple species, as well as against pyrethroid-susceptible mosquitoes. “We launched this project to bring the global vector control community something very specific,” said Jason Clark, Valent BioSciences’ global business manager. “To make it happen, we would need multiple active ingredients to target multiple sites within the mosquito, and they all would all have to ‘play nice’ in one formulation. We believe that we have succeeded and are now focused on the ...
