Fertilizer Sprayers/Farming Simulator 15
A Fertilizer Sprayer (not to be confused with a Fertilizer Spreader) is a piece of equipment that can cover a field with Liquid Fertilizer. This doubles the field's Crop yield. Fertilizer Sprayers are small and somewhat cheap, but the fertilizer they use is expensive.
There is only one Fertilizer Sprayer in the base game. In addition, the game offers one expansion tank specifically designed to work only with Sprayers (and is listed in the sprayer category in the shop).
List of Fertilizer Sprayers
| Spreader | Price ($) |
Maintenance ($ / day) |
Capacity (liters) |
Working Width (m) |
Max. Working Speed (km/h) |
Front Hitch |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
29,000 | 40 | 1,920 | 24.0 | 12 | Three-point hitch |
Liquid Fertilizer Tanks
| Tank | Price ($) |
Maintenance ($ / day) |
Capacity (liters) |
Front Hitch |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 |
5,500 | 10 | 1,125 | Three-point hitch |
Overview
Fertilizer Sprayers are machines that can be filled up with Liquid Fertilizer, and then taken to a field where they will distribute it onto the soil. The fertilizer material itself is a mix of mineral compounds that are highly nutritious to plants. Any patch of field covered with this material will yield double the normal amount of fruit, when harvested.
There is only one Fertilizer Sprayer available in the game. The other piece of equipment listed under the "Sprayers" category at the ship is simply an expansion tank that can be used in conjunction with an actual Sprayer, and has no function of its own. A Fertilizer Sprayer consists primarily of a large tank that can be attached to a Tractor. The tank has two long metal arms that can unfold to a large width. Hoses running down these arms take fertilizer from the tank, and then push it through nozzles on the undersides of the arms. These nozzles spray the fertilizer down onto the soil.
Fertilizer Sprayers must be filled with Liquid Fertilizer in order to work. This type of fertilizer is available in infinite quantities at the blue Fertilizer Tank, which can be found at your farm as well as the Garden Center. However, every liter of Fertilizer you take from the tank costs money.
Once dragged out to a field, unfolded, and activated, the Fertilizer Sprayer will continuously expend its supply of Fertilizer. Any ground directly underneath the spray nozzles will become fertilized instantly. Fertilizer Sprayers do not care whether the ground they are working has already been fertilized - they will continue expending Liquid Fertilizer until they are turned off.
A Fertilizer Sprayer can cover an entire field very rapidly, due to its large working width. If not wasted inappropriately, 2,000 liters of Liquid Fertilizer should be enough to work about 3 hectares of land
Among other types of fertilization machines, Fertilizer Sprayers work very quickly and efficiently on small fields, and use up less costly fertilizer than Fertilizer Spreaders. On the other hand, the small capacity of the machines available in the base game leaves something to be desired. You will need to refill the Sprayer constantly to cover larger fields. Because they can only refill in specific locations on the map, they may be far less effective on larger fields.
Filling with Fertilizer
Once a Fertilizer Sprayer has been attached to a towing vehicle, it needs to be filled with Liquid Fertilizer before it can start working.
Filling can only occur at a blue Fertilizer Tank. There are two such tanks on each map: one at your farm, and the other at the Garden Center. They should be quite visible from a distance, due to their striking color.
To fill the Fertilizer Sprayer, tow it right up next to the tank, and hit the refill button. Refilling will automatically stop when the tank is full, or if you pull the Sprayer away from the tank. You can also stop it manually, by hitting the refill button again.
Each liter of Liquid Fertilizer you purchase costs around $3.2. Therefore, the AMAZONE UF 1801 can be filled for about $6140. These are not trivial costs in the early game, but they are often worth it, since the fertilizer will double the yield of the crops and therefore double the profits. Remember that you can always stop the filling process partway through, if you're afraid to run out of money.
Liquid Fertilizer is always available, an important advantage over Slurry and Manure. However, both these types of fertilizer are, essentially, free of charge.
Fertilizing the Field
As long as the Fertilizer Sprayer's tank contains at least 1 liter of Liquid Fertilizer, and is attached to a towing vehicle, it can be activated.
As soon as the Sprayer is activated, it will immediately begin dispensing Fertilizer within its working area. It will expend 4.8 liters of Fertilizer per second, until it runs out. The Fertilizer Sprayer does not care whether it is currently on a field, nor whether that field is already fertilized - it will continue expending its fertilizer until turned off.
The working area of the Fertilizer Sprayer is a line underneath the machine's unfolded arms - it works pretty much the same as Sowing Machines and other field equipment in this regard, making it very easy to figure out where the fertilizer will go when you turn the machine on, and makes it easier for Hired Workers to get full field coverage. Any piece of field within that working area will instantly become fertilized. A piece of field that was already fertilized does not gain any additional benefit from being fertilized again, but the Fertilizer Sprayer does not care - it will expend fertilizer anyway.
Fertilization can be performed at any time, but will only affect the next crop that becomes ripe on the fertilized field. That crop will give double yields, and the soil underneath it will become immediately unfertilized. Therefore, you may postpone your fertilization until just before the field becomes ripe, and still get the same results as if you had fertilized the field before it was even sowed. However, if you fertilize a field when it already contains ripened crops, those crops will not give a double yield - but the next harvest will. Until a crop becomes ripe on top of it, fertilized soil will not become unfertilized no matter what you do to it.
Hired Workers
You may use Hired Workers to operate a Fertilizer Sprayer.
Hired Workers will give very different coverage depending on whether you mount the Sprayer at the front or the rear of your tractor. Mounting at the rear gives good coverage of the field with only a few spots missed along the edge on most passes. Front mounting can confuse the Hired Worker greatly, resulting in some passes that miss large chunks of fields, and other passes that give perfect coverage but involve bizarre turning maneuvers. In both cases, the wide arms of the Sprayer are especially prone to colliding with terrain obstacles, causing the driver to become stuck.
Note that Hired Workers can continue working when they run out of Liquid Fertilizer in the tank. However, once the tank is empty, the Hired Worker will automatically purchase more Liquid Fertilizer as necessary, at a much higher price than normal. Since Liquid Fertilizer is already quite expensive, this can end up costing you a lot of money.
The solution is to either use automated Fertilizer Sprayers only on limited-size fields, or make sure to dismiss the Hired Worker and go refill the tank every time it runs out.
Refilling
In the Bjornholm map, most fields can be covered even on a single AMAZONE UF 1801 tank.
However on Westbridge Hills, most fields are too large to be fully covered in one go. In this case, you may need to refill the device at least once to cover the entire field.
This presents a problem, since there are only two refilling points on the map. You would need to drive all the way to the refilling point, and then back to the field, taking quite a bit of extra time and effort.
There is no way to fill the Fertilizer Sprayer from any other source. There is no way to fill a "secondary" tank with Solid Fertilizer and drive it to the field where it can serve as such a refilling point. This is another important disadvantage that the Fertilizer Spreaders have in comparison to some other fertilization devices.
Extra Tank
Fertilizer Sprayers have one small advantage in the form of extra fertilizer tanks. These tanks are mounted on the same tractor as the Sprayer, and simply increase the amount of Liquid Fertilizer that the tractor can carry at once. The AMAZONE FT 1001 is the only such device in the game.
The extra tank must be filled just like the Sprayer itself (see above) in order to work. When working on the field, the Sprayer will automatically draw Liquid Fertilizer from the extra tank, as soon as the Sprayer's own tank runs out.
The extra tank available in the game is about 60% the size of the Sprayer. This gives you about 1.8 extra hectares of work before your Liquid Fertilizer runs out.
The extra tank has no other functionality, and will not work with any other device in the game.