Get the most from your herbicides!!

It’s the time of year where you can be presented by some rather large, waxy weeds which may need to be controlled by glyphosate or other herbicides. Have you ever thought how you could improve the efficiency of the product you buy?

Two crucial additives to consider using in order to improve the efficiency of most herbicides are Water Conditioners & Adjuvant Oils. Individually, these additives can improve the efficiency of herbicides by up to 25%, easily outweighing their cost.

Water Conditioners

Water conditioners are vital when using products such as glyphosate in hard water areas. The glyphosate can be ‘locked up’ as soon as it touches the hard water making it loose as much as 40% of its effectiveness.

These are available in many brands, but probably the most popular is a product called X-Change.
X-Change can be used with all pesticide sprays on all crops, at all timings, and it softens hard water. X-Change also acidifies the water to pH 4.6, which is the optimum for chemicals to work at, and has a “built-in” humectant and anti-foam.

A customer of ours who grows 400acres of trees had recently been considering ‘giving up’ on using glyphosate between the rows as they were struggling to gain control of certain weeds even when used at rates over 4L/ha. Since using X-Change in conjunction with glyphosate, they have managed to control the tougher weeds such as nettle & volunteer rape at rates as low as 2.5L/ha.

Click HERE for more information and prices of X-Change

The map below shows the areas of hard water.

Adjuvant Oils

We supply a product called Phase 2 which is a quality methylated rapeseed oil. While its principally used as a ‘sticker’ to get the spray solution to adhere to the leaf better, they also can help reduce drift & also the rain-fastness interval. When treating waxy or large weeds such as Ragwort or Ivy we would recommend to use Phase 2 in order to help the chemical penetrate the leaf cuticle. Through our in house trials we have seen Phase 2 improve the results of glyphosate by as much as 20%.

Click HERE for more information about Phase II

The image below shows what a spray droplet looks like under a microscope when it touches the leaf. The top is a standard droplet, and as you can see they often bounce or splash off the leaf. The bottom is when used with Phase 2 the droplet sticks and spreads across the leaf and is fully absorbed into the plant.