Hi Stream,
My guess is going to be aproximately 5 feet. Most of their current rotary spreaders are 5 feet between passes.

What you can do to check is:
1. Lay-out a tarp at least 6 feet in width.
2. Mark a line with masking tape down the center of the tarp.
3. Load the spreader.
4. Make a pass down stradling the masking tape line spreading what you loaded.
5. Measure the radius of the spray (distance from the masking tape line to the edge where the product reached when spread.
6. Subtract 6 inches from this number and multiply by 2.

This number is going to be the distance between passes. You are subtracting 6 inches from half of the diameter because a 1 foot overlap is recommended.

You can now recover the spread product from the tarp and put back in the spreader hopper.

Hope this helps. It's not really too difficult at all.

-Chris

Thanks for the tip Navistar. Makes sense.

For a long time the only Scotts rotary spreaders I saw were Speedy Green 1000, 2000, and 3000. I had a 3000, but it broke. I went to Lowes to get a new one, but all they had was a new one called a Scotts Standard Spreader (see link). From looking at their website apparently they no longer make the Speedy Green Spreaders. Anyway, I figured since the proper settings for the 1000,2000 and 3000 were always the same on the back of whatever product I was spreading that the Scotts Standard must be the same as well. Well I was wrong. I started spreading some urea last week and realized immediately that the setting was way off. There was way too much product coming out. The 4 setting on the old spreaders doesn't match the 4 setting on the new spreader. Be careful people.

I was back in Lowes yesterday and looked at a lot of products for their spreader settings. They all still had the settings for the Speedy Green line. Now I basically get to guess at the settings for whatever I'm sreading.

Here is a link that might be useful: Scotts Spreaders

Hi Heelsfan,
I have the same problem with the newer spreaders as well. Some of the product makers other than Scott's don't yet have settings for the Deluxe Edgeguard.

If you have a product with both the Standard Spreader and the one of the Speedy Green settings you're in business.

Let me explain:
Assume you have the Standard Spreader and you are speading T/B + 2% Iron. The back of the bag has the following settings (NOTE: Not actual setting's):

Speedy Green 1000: 5
Standard Spreader: 10

Now if you have a product, say Preen Crabgrass Preventer that may not have a setting for the Standard Spreader but gives you a setting of 3 for the Speedy Green 1000 you now have enough information to figure it our mathematically (Cross multiply and divide):

Multiply 10 times 3 and divide by 5 which equals 6. Since, in this case the Standard spreader is twice that of the Speedy Green it's easy to see.

You're just comparing ratios.

-Chris

I'm not so sure that is always the case. Maybe with that product it was.

I normally spread my Urea at setting 4 on my old Speedy Green 3000. I started to spread it with my new Standard Spreader with it on 4 as well. If I wasnn't paying attention I would have applied it all after treating about 1/6 of my yard. By your calculations I should have put it on 8, which would have applied it even quicker.

Hi Heelsfan,
Remember, the settings I gave above were only examples to explain the principle. You would need to make a comparison with the actual settings on actual products.

-Chris