Anderson Spreader Settings Guide

The Andersons Plant Nutrient is one of the biggest manufacturers of fertilizers, soil amendments, and industrial products in the US. Their products range from materials and equipment for mechanized farming to everything needed for lawn topdressing.

Being a widely patronized company, we’ve seen people buy their spreaders, try to use them with other generic lawn materials, but fail because they used the wrong spread settings.  Although that’s not to say there’s a line in the sand when it comes to spreader settings, this article will outline the standard spreader settings you should implement if you’re working with any of their four bestselling lawns spreaders.

Anderson Spreader Settings Chart

The Andersons currently promotes four spreader models; the Andersons Model 2000, 2000 SR, CO-1000, and the Anderson SSD Drop. This article will list standard spreader settings for both generic materials and product sizes for each spreader model.

Andersons Model 2000 Spreader Settings

Andersons Model 2000 SR Spreader Settings

Anderson Model LCO-1000 Spreader Settings

Andersons SSD Drop Spreader Settings

Here’s a quick settings chart based on product size:

Spreader Settings for Andersons Model 2000, 2000 SR, and LCO-1000 Based on Product Size

Cone Settings per Particle Size on Andersons Model 2000 and 2000 SR

While these settings were gotten using standard spreaders in ideal spreading environments, the actual settings you end up using may slightly differ from what’s written due to several factors like terrain, age of spreader, and walking speed.

At any rate, you want to take these settings as a groundwork to start and gradually work your way up or down the settings range while using no more than ¼ of the entire yard for testing.

How to Calibrate a Spreader

Spreader calibration can basically be done in two ways; with mathematical calculations and without mathematical calculations. This article will focus on explaining how to calculate a spreader using the mathematical method.

While both methods are efficient, the one you choose will largely depend on your personal preferences and not the results from the calibration itself.

Spreader Calibration with Mathematical Calculations

Calibrating spreaders with math is often preferred by most professional top-dressers because it reduces the amount of work needed to get the same results that you also get without mathematical calculations. Here are simple walk-through steps you can follow to calibrate your spreader using math;

Step #1

Put a weighed amount of the material (seed, fertilizer, or soil treatment) you want to spread in the spreader’s hopper. Ideally, you want to weigh out anything between 3-8 pounds so that the spreader will have enough to work with, but not too much.

Step #2

Cut out a test strip; you want this to be no more than ¼ of the entire yard.  While that’s the case, less is often better, and a longer strip (preferably 50 ft.) is usually easier to test on.

Step #3

Say you’re using a 50 ft. strip, after walking through to spread the fertilizer, close the hopper and weigh what’ remaining. Subtract the leftover from the original amount you started with to evaluate the amount used. 

For final calculations, we will assume you used 3lbs. Next, you want to calculate the spread settings for the material using the formula “amount of fertilizer used * 1000 ÷ area of the test strip.”

For Rotary/Broadcast Spreaders: Say the spreader has a 10 ft. wide strip, you will multiply 10 by 50 because we originally made a 50 ft. long strip. The answer, in this case, 500 ft. is the area of the test strip, then you can proceed to calculate the required spreader settings. 

3lbs spent on a 500 ft. test strip area will give >>> 3 * 1000 ÷ 500 = 6. Hence, your spreader setting is 4lbs/1000 sq. ft. Now if you’re satisfied with the result, you’ll want to record the settings used on the spreader to record the lbs/1000sq. ft. However, if you want to increase the application rate, you only need to open the spreader range more and carry out another test spread.

For Drop Spreaders: You want to, first of all, evaluate the width opening. Assuming you have a 2 ft. wide strip on your fertilizer, you can then proceed to calculate in a similar way as understood with rotary spreaders.

First, determine your test strip area; 2 * 50 = 100 now you know your area of the test strip is 100, you can proceed with the normal calculations. 

Now assuming you spent 1lbs of the fertilizer, the final spreader settings will be;

1 * 1000 ÷ 100 = 10. Hence, your spreader setting is 10lbs/1000 sq. ft. Now you want to record the settings on the spreader if the spread comes out as expected. You can also adjust the spreader settings if you are looking for something a little different from your previous result.