With the widespread availability and decreased price in glyphosate, its use as a non-selective, complete burn-down herbicide for site prep on new and established food plots is becoming commonplace. Some people may have noticed, however, that their spraying seemed less effective on weeds and overall herbicide performance was low. This can happen often when filling tanks with a rural water source, but there’s a simple fix. One easy and inexpensive thing you can do to counter this problem and increase the performance is to add ammonium sulfate (or AMS) to your glyphosate tank solution.
Many sources being used for filling up spray tanks are rural water supplies or well water and it is often considered “hard” water. This hardness of the water is due to high levels of various salts that are found in many natural water sources. Unfortunately, these salts will readily bind to glyphosate reducing its absorption and performance.
AMS can be found in liquid form as well as water soluble granular form. In liquid form use 2.5 to 5 gallons of AMS per 100 gallons of spray solution, or in granular form use 10 to 15 lbs. of AMS per 100 gallons. Using AMS will not only increase performance on most all weeds, it can help you get a better kill on weed species that have a natural resistance to glyphosate such as morning glory, lambs quarter, velvet leaf and horseweed.
