Southern Ag 12401 SURFLAN A.S PRE-Emergent HERBICIDE, 8oz, Bright Orange

The first thing you should know about Surflan A. S. is that it's really oriented to commercial use with powered equipment. Nevertheless, you can apply it to your lawn with a hand sprayer. The next thing to know is that it's bright orange with a consistency like thick latex paint. And the third important fact is that it doesn't like to stay in solution, so you have to be attentive to agitating your sprayer periodically when you're using it. I had about a half a tank of spray left when it started raining on me so I let the sprayer sit for a few days. After resuming and finishing I opened the sprayer to clean it out and was surprised to find A LOT of dense orange Surflan concentrate precipitated in the bottom of the sprayer. And, it was really tenacious and took a LONG time to get it out. So the take home message is: agitate the solution when applying and clean the sprayer out immediately after you're finished.By the way, I decided to get a quality sprayer for the job and purchased a Smith R200 sprayer and calibrated it over a marked 20 x 50 foot area (1000 sq ft). Using the red tip and the optional (included) pressure regulator, the sprayer delivered a consistent 18-20-ish inch wide strip and covered 1000 sq ft using 2000 ml water. Therefore, to deliver a 1.5 oz application rate, I mixed 1.5 oz Surflan in 2000 ml water (ie, 1.5 oz Surflan per 1000 sq ft). At the 1.5 oz rate, and if your lawn is dormant and brown, you can actually see the orange color on your lawn, and this helps you detect areas you might have missed. I applied the Surflan in mid-January and it definitely helped prevent a lot of winter weed growth. However, I noticed that a considerable number of winter weeds had already sprouted by then, so next year I'm going to apply in both mid-December and mid-January (we're in climate zone 7). By the way, the product insert it seems to indicate that the concentration of Surflan you use is partly related to its longevity of effectiveness rather than to its "strength."

I've used this for 3 years with great success in decorative rock areas. It is harder to mix correctly than a regular weed killer. It is thick like paint and will go straight to the bottom of your sprayer when you follow the instruction of filling tank 1/4 to 1/3. I put a gallon in my 4 gallon sprayer, measure 8 oz into my 64 oz measuring cup then fill cup with water and add to sprayer fill cup again to get residual out add it to tank and shake like crazy. Fill tank with water and shake some more. When I added it to my sprayer per the instructions directly into a gallon of water and shook it well the 1st area I sprayed was more orange than the rest. After adding water to the surflan as then adding to the tank my rocks were all the same color.

This has really made a difference in my yard. I have half an acre and the back is all dirt at this point. There are copious amounts of weeds every year, I have to spray glyphosate several times in the spring, and even then the weeds are hard to control. So far, this has kept new weeds from growing at all, I will wait and see what happens in spring. I missed a few spots when I was spraying and the weeds are growing very well in those areas, so just by looking at the yard, I can tell where this was sprayed and where I missed.I was worried that the orange dye would stain my gravel but it did not. There was a slightly dingy look after I sprayed, more of a tan color than orange, but it disappeared after the first rain.

This is a good product for 85%-90% weed control. It is a PRE-EMERGENT herbicide, meaning that it kills the weeds (actually its seeds in the ground) prior to germination - before the stem/leaves "emerge". It is not going to kill weeds that have already "emerged" - i.e. with stem/leaves. For that, you need a POST-EMERGENT weed killer like Weed-B-Gon. Surflan is a "weed suppressant" for weed control, not for total elimination - so it is only GOOD to lessen your need to spend your leisure time breaking your back pulling weeds (read - suppress & control, not totally eliminate). One should NOT expect that 100% of weeds will be killed and you will be on easy street for months. Even if you applied the perfect mix of Surflan perfectly with your sprayer & not missing a spot or going over too lightly, there could have been minute weeds already sprouted under the grass but in the ground - not visible to you - that will not have been killed, and thus become visible 1-2 days after your application, making you think this product is junk. Inadequate instructions. As another reader stated, the problem with the instructions is that it is set out in fl oz per 1000 sq ft or qts per acre (this is great if you own a farm), but doesn't really tell you how much water to dilute it with (a VERY unhelpful statement is provided under "handheld sprayer application" for us small users is "The amount of water used to apply Surflan is not critical, but should be sufficient for uniform coverage of the target area"). Duh, IT IS CRITICAL, as too much water means the solution will be too diluted and not be effective, and little water means it will be too strong and it will kill the grass! And what does "uniform coverage" mean? It doesn't tell you approx how long to spray over. For most small users, the dilution rate should be set out in FL OZ. PER GALLON OF WATER. Another issue is that you must thus guess how high/fast to move the spray wand and apply the mix for 1000 sq ft. There is a lot of room for "error" as the human applicator might go too fast, miss a spot or just simply not apply the right amount. But I would suspect that even the "pros" will not always get it right. For myself, trying to decipher the broadcast application rate instructions for WARM SEASON TURFGRASSES, "1 fl oz/1000 sq ft" -- I have used 1 FL OZ (i.e. 2 tablespoons) PER GALLON of water, for my Bermuda grass (which tends to be less tolerant of weedkillers). If you have stronger grasses like Zoysia or St. Augustine, I would imagine you might make the mix 0.5 fl oz stronger per gallon. Again, as I said, you will get 85-90% weed control/suppression over maybe 1-3 months, but don't expect that you or your weeding equipment will be able to permanently retire from this chore.