Arrest Herbicide

After planting food plots for over 10 years we finally joined the Arrest herbicide brigade in 2005. Since our plots are relatively small we have always had problems with grass and weed competition, especially grass. Mowing has often helped keep the weeds somewhat under control but the grasses liked being mowed just as much as the clover and we soon had a lot of grass in our plots.

This year our old house and garden food plots began seeing grass competition that we feared would take them over. Each plot had a different story.

The oldhouse plot had been planted two years ago and was our strongest plot. In the spring the clover had jumped up and was doing real well but the grass had also started to come on real strong.

The garden plot was planted last spring and looked real bad through the winter and into the early spring before it jumped back up real nice. I was pleased with how this plot came back after looking so bad but a lot of grass came back with the clover.

Worried that we may lose these plots to grass we obtained a pint of Arrest herbicide from the Whitetail Institute, the makers of Imperial Whitetail Clover.

The Arrest was easy to mix up and we got a cheap garden sprayer to apply the herbicide.

After two weeks we could see the grass starting to yellow and by four weeks the grass was dead. Arrest has been one of the best products that we’ve used. We’ll be using more Arrest in our plots in the future.

I had always wondered how economical it would be to use herbicides. After using the Arrest and seeing how well it did I thought the cost was well worth it. One pint is $23.99 and should treat about a half acre. We treated two of our plots and spot sprayed two others. The cost to treat them was less than I thought it would be.

The only problem that we have had with the grass herbicide is now that the grass is dead the weeds look more menacing. The weeds are not as thick as the grass was but since the grass is gone we notice the weeds more. We’ve mowed the weeds which may stop some of them but we may end up buying some Slay herbicide, a weed herbicide from the Whitetail Institute.

Although it took us over 10 years to enter the herbicide market the success of the Arrest herbicide has made us believers. We should now be able to stretch out the life of our plots now that we have reduced the grass competition.

The following are the directions for using Arrest taken from Whitetail News, a newsletter published by the Whitetail Institute. These instructions are for maximum effectiveness of the herbicide. As with many of you I was not able to follow these directions to the T but we try to do the best we can.

“Arrest will kill grass effectively right after spring green-up or when the grass is up to 12 inches high. If the grass is higher than this, mow it back to 6 or 8 inches and wait 2 weeks before spraying. Also, best results will occur when the ground temperature is 60 degrees or higher.”

Herbicide Update

In the years since 2005 we've used Arrest on a limited basis. What we have done lately is to increase our food plot acreage. This has helped with over-grazing which allows the clover in our plots to better keep up. Mowing is still a critical part of our plan and on occasion, when we see grass competition on a big scale in a young clover plot, we will hit it with Arrest.

This is the garden food plot one month after application of the Arrest herbicide in 2005.

To see how all of our food plots are doing and what we have done lately sign up for The Food Plot Journal E-zine that we put out every quarter.

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