I recommend Bonide Turbo a lot when it comes to surfactants. Why? Because it’s simply the most readily available spreader-sticker in these parts today.
Photo: Bonide
When it comes to weed control in Southeast Texas, there’s one rule we should always live by because our water is so very, very hard: Don’t forget to add a surfactant to the herbicide!
There used to be several surfactant brands sold locally, but most have fallen off of the distribution chain. I think that’s because their makers simply don’t market their products anymore. Bonide Turbo is in just about every nursery, garden center, hardware store and feed store in this region.
I always recommend using a genuine surfactant like Bonide Turbo because it is a true spreader-sticker. Many people use dish soap as a surfactant, but that old-school add-in is simply a spreader, and not so much a sticker. Plus, many of today’s dish soaps contain anti-bacterial agents that I believe further reduce the “sticker” part of the equation. True non-ionic surfactants such as Turbo do both.
You’ll sometimes see a bottle of herbicide that warns not to add additional surfactant. Their manufacturers may have a good reason for that, but they also may not realize how incredibly hard our water is here. So, with those products, test a spot with no added surfactant, then test a small area with the correct amount of Turbo added. If you see an excessive amount of yellowing on the site where you used added surfactant, don’t add it to the full application. However, in my 24 years of hosting GardenLine, I’ve never had any of the thousands following my surfactant rule complain that adding it killed their yard or made the grass more yellow than the weeds. To the contrary, I have heard of countless times when herbicides just dripped off weed leaf surfaces because no spreader-sticker was incorporated, and the yards wound up with a phytotoxic burn (inordinate yellowing) because the herbicide saturated the soil instead of sticking to the weeds.
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PHOTO: Bonide and Getty Images