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Lawn Health AI

Active ingredient

Clethodim

Cyclohexenone oxime — a DIM (ACCase inhibitor, Group 1)

A grass-selective herbicide from the DIM family, and both labels we read print GROUP 1 on the front panel. It blocks an enzyme grasses depend on and broadleaf plants do not.

What it does

Kills grasses growing inside a broadleaf planting, which is the job nothing else does cleanly. The sites on the labels we read are all broadleaf crops — alfalfa, sweet and red clover, mustard, canola, soybeans, flax, southern peas — which is why the products carrying it are sold to food-plot growers rather than to homeowners.

What it does not do

It has no lawn use at all, and that is not an omission on the label — a lawn IS grass, so clethodim sprayed on turf kills the turf. Neither label we read carries a single turf or lawn site. It also does nothing to broadleaf weeds, so it is the wrong half of a food-plot programme on its own.

The label constraint people miss

Two things. First, it is NOT a rotation partner for fluazifop even though the two do different jobs: both are ACCase inhibitors in Group 1, so alternating them is not alternating modes of action. Second, the geographic restrictions on these labels are unusual and easy to miss — one prohibits use in a mapped area of Solano County, California and in Hays County, Texas to protect endangered plants, and the other caps the rate on Long Island, New York. The two products also differ by more than double in concentration (12.6% and 26.4%), so rate arithmetic does not carry from one to the other.

Products we review that contain it

Every product below is here because we opened its label — on EPA's own database or the registrant's — and read Clethodim in the ingredient statement. Registration numbers are on each product's page.

  • Whitetail Institute Arrest Max Selective Grass Herbicide, 1 Pint — selective grass herbicide for food plots product photograph on a plain background

    Selective Grass Herbicide for Food Plots (clethodim)

    Whitetail Institute Arrest Max Selective Grass Herbicide, 1 Pint

    ★★★★☆ (4.3/5)

    Clethodim kills grasses and leaves broadleaf plants standing — the mirror image of every lawn herbicide, and what a clover plot actually needs.

    Best for: Grass weeds in a clover, alfalfa or brassica food plot, at plot scale

    Read our full review →

    $46–$56

    View on Amazon
  • AgriStar Clethodim 2E Herbicide, 1 Gallon — selective grass herbicide product photograph on a plain background

    Selective Grass Herbicide (clethodim 2E concentrate)

    AgriStar Clethodim 2E Herbicide, 1 Gallon

    ★★★★☆ (4.4/5)

    The agricultural version of the food plot grass killers, at a gallon — same clethodim, a fraction of the cost per treated acre.

    Best for: Grass control across acres of clover, alfalfa or brassica, where plot-sized bottles stop making financial sense

    Read our full review →

    $62–$78

    View on Amazon

Guides that use Clethodim

Buy for the active, then read the label anyway. Two products with the same active are not interchangeable — concentration, labelled sites and species tolerances all vary, and a three-part registration number means a narrowed label. How to read one in two minutes. Where our page and your container disagree, the container is the legal authority.