Clethodim damage to chufas

It's day 21 since I sprayed my little volunteer chufa plot at a rate of 2 oz of Milestone and 10 oz of Clethodim per acre. The Milestone had the broadleaf weeds dying very quickly, but it took about 2 weeks for the Clethodim to make the grass start turning yellow and dying. Now the chufas are starting to show damage that I think has to be from the Clethodim.



Don't let this concern you if you are using Clethodim on your chufas - this is entirely operator error. I only had my heavy golf cart to spray with and it would have killed a lot of chufas to run it over the field. So I decided to spray with the wand. I thought I could run down each side and reach the middle, but you can see I didn't quite make it.



The chufas in the weedy spot in the middle are bright green; many of the ones that were sprayed are yellow. I tried my best to cover everything equally, but obviously I failed. The other side of the plot was planted about a month ago and needs to be sprayed. I'm gonna mix the next tank at half the strength of before. I'm not sure if I'm gonna spray the weedy patch again or not. Any ideas?

Not a clue! I've followed your recipe the past 3 years or so with Clethodim and 24D-B and have good results.

Mr. Steve I sprayed my volunteer chufa and shortly after I sprayed one side it rained. I probably got a 30 to 40 minute window be the rain. I went back the next day and sprayed them again. I think I over did it by spraying twice. The chufa looked more yellow than the first time I saw them. I pulled up some plants and they had good nut production. Those chufa are at least 90 days old or older. They were plowed end of April so they my be finished. The turkeys have already started scratching in that plot.

I sprayed my chufa I planted with my planted last Wednesday. The chufa looked great and grass was dying. When I'm able I'll go check that plot again and take some pictures.

I'm sure its just operator error, with me not applying it evenly with the wand. I've used 10oz of Clethodim many times without issue, but always used the ATV sprayer.

Glad you made a good crop there! Its always aggravating when the turkeys start eating them before they are ready. Not much to do about it.

this happened to some of mine a couple years back, I figured I mixed it too strong. I just went back and hit them with nitrogen before a rain and they recovered

Thanks for the comment. I've already hit it with N and I expect them to make a pretty good recovery. I just wanted everyone to see that it's really important to stick to recipes and spray evenly. It is possible to damage chufas with most any herbicide.

I just sprayed the planted part and sprayed the weedy area I missed in the volunteer part. I used a mix half as strong as before, but it is really hard to get even coverage with a wand. That whole patch is only .3 of an acre, so it's just something I'm playing around with.

Well, it's always easy to post your success stories and never mention the failures, but I'm gonna show everyone what a Fatal overdose of Clethodim looks like on chufas. I just made this pic of the same little patch in the above pic. I really thought the chufas would recover and green back up, but they are all but dead. They have made a few tubers, but it doesn't look to me that they are green enough to make more



I really don't understand this. Using the wand could explain part of it, but there must be something going on that I don't understand. There are very few turkeys in the area, so hopefully the planted section will make more than they can eat, but I hate to kill good chufas.

The volunteer section was last disked in mid April, so those plants are about 4 months old and near the end of life anyway, but they should not look like this.

So be careful with Clethodim.

Thanks for the advice!

Mine need spraying now but I can't get a day off when it isn't raining to get it done.

it wont stop raining on my mine, not that im complaining but I'll destroy them if i took a tractor in them now

I use my ranger to spray so that isn't a factor, just haven't had a day when it wasn't raining. I'd hate to spray and it come a downpour and my poison get washed away before it does any good.