Weed and Clover Control

We had some questions about how to control weeds in the yard. And one of the ways you can do that is with a broad-leaved weed killer. Now, there’s a granular if you’re treating a very large area.

The granular you want to put down when it’s wet, you don’t want it to rain for 24 hours after you apply it. This allows the chemical to actually stick to the foliage of the weeds, and then 24 hours is long enough for it to absorb into the sap system of the plant. If you’re just spot treating some small areas, you can use a liquid.The liquid is also extremely effective. You put it down, and, again, you don’t want it to rain for 24 hours. That way it can go ahead and absorb into the plant’s root system and sap system and kill the root system off.

And that’s something you just definitely want to make sure you keep into the yard because it doesn’t know the difference between annuals or perennials or weeds.

It’s all a weed to that chemical, so that’s a very good point. And also spraying in the evening hours. We’ve talked about it before. The pores of the plant open up in the evening hours to drink the dew in. That’s going to be coming throughout the course of the night, so that’s a great time to apply the chemical. If you apply it midday, the chemical itself, when we’re above 80, 85 degrees, can actually burn the foliage of things you don’t want it to hurt.

So the other thing that happens in the evening hours is the wind generally dies down, and so you get less what we call drift when you’re spraying a product. You don’t want to drift into a flower bed from the yard where you’re actually spraying. And we’ve seen that. People bring in something like a sample of their plant, what’s wrong with my leaves, and oh, did you spray something? And yeah, it was just the wind that caught it at the wrong time.

We have Dale here in Massillon. ‘I got a question about I got a whole bunch, a lot of clover growing in my yard, and I just wondered what is the best chemical to spray it with, and what is the best time to do that, and can I do that when it’s real warm?’

Yes, you can. So there is a product we carry called Bonide, and Bonide has a specific weed killer for hard-to-kill weeds. Now clover, if you’ve ever really looked closely at the leaf, there’s little fine hairs on the clover, and when you spray it with moisture, it beads up and drops off.

Well, this chemical has what they call a spreader sticker, and it mattes down those fine hairs and actually makes the chemical stick to the leaf, so it’s much more effective. Now when I said you could spray when it’s warm, what I mean by that is you never would want to spray like next week we’re going to be in the 90s. You do not want to spray in the middle of the day when we’re hot like that.

You would always want to wait until much later in the evening when the sun’s getting closer to going down. You could apply the chemical at that time, and you’re going to be much more effective doing it that way than trying to do it when it’s in the middle of the day. You don’t want to cause any damage to the grass. You just want to get the clover out of it. 

The name of the chemical company is Bonide that we found. We’ve had really good results with their product, and it’s called chickweed and clover killer. You can pick it up at the store. We’ve got it in ready-to-use, hose-end, and concentrate. So it’s three different ways to apply it.

Again, it’s really important that after you apply it you don’t really want it to rain for 24 hours. You want to give that chemical a chance to absorb into the leaves. And sometimes chickweed and clover are a little harder to kill. You may get the vast majority of it with the first application, but you may have to make a second application 14 days after the original one.

In the evening hours. We never want to spray in the middle of the heat in the middle of the day. It can cause damage to the foliage of the plant that you want to protect. And you don’t actually want to damage the grass itself. You just want to kill the weeds. So evening spraying is the best.

Questions? Email us at [email protected] or call one of our two locations: Portage (330-499-0101) or Everhard (330-492-1243).