Working in The Rain

We had a rainy day on Saturday but we cut buckthorn and honeysuckle and herbicided anyway.

One reason people don't herbicide in the rain is that they think the herbicide will get washed off. If you are using herbicide with surfactant, in accordance with the label, and apply it as soon as the cut is made, it will soak in almost immediately and once it has soaked in it cannot wash off. The photo shows stumps that we herbicided on Saturday morning when it was raining. On Saturday afternoon it rained hard. The photo was taken on Sunday morning. You can tell from the dye that the herbicide did not wash off.





The other concern about herbiciding in the rain is that the sponge will get soaked with rain and then you will be applying water instead of herbicide. This can be prevented by keeping a cover on the sponge until you are ready to use it. We use covers made from bottled water containers. If you don't drink bottled water yourself you can get empties from the side of the road, parking lots, or open trash containers.


A possible research project would be to quantify how much rain it would take to reduce herbicide effectiveness. It would be a two year project since it would take until the second year to see how many resprouts there were. The first year would consist of designing the experiment, applying herbicide in various amounts of rain and marking the stumps. In the second year the resprouts would be counted, a statistical analysis done, and conclusions and recommendations determined.


Cut stump treatment is different from foliar spray since the herbicide soaks into the wood very quickly and takes from an hour to up to 24 hours to fully soak into foliage.