Bonide Sucker Punch, 16 oz Ready-to-Use Spray, Control Unwanted Plant Sprouts, Plant Growth Regulator for Home Garden

Folks, listen. The bad reviews here are centered on the spray bottle, not the effectiveness of the product. This stuff is AMAZING! I have a group of very aggressively growing Aspen trees in my backyard and front yard. Over the years the shoots have spread to the point of driving me insane. They’re all within my lawn and throughout other areas of my landscaping. I found this product and was super skeptical, but also desperate because I was growing tired of picking the shoots. It was digging into my free time each week and significantly increasing the amount of time and effort needed to maintain my yard and lawns. I purchased two bottles of this stuff that used the applicator brush. It took me a while to apply the product to every shoot, but it was a simple process. The best part was I learned that this product did not harm my lawn nor harm the tree. I have plenty left over for future applications too. Anyway, this stuff worked like a miracle! The only shoots that grew so far were ones I initially missed. It’s been raining a ton, but the shoots have not come back. My understanding is this isn’t a permanent thing, but applying this every once in a while is light years better for my lawns, my yards, and my back. 10 stars!

I used to have two mature Callery pear trees (Pyrus calleryana), a deciduous tree native to China and Vietnam. They were planted by the home’s previous owner. While they certainly provided shade for home and lawn, not to mention a beautiful fiery display in the autumn (and a foul dead fish odor in the spring), they had to go. These trees are fragile and break, and destroy native plants nearby. They spread like weeds! One bright, hot day in September 2023, the tree in the backyard dropped three branches on the roof. Thankfully no one was hurt, and the damage was minimal. They had to go! A tree service chopped them down two days later. Fast forward to 2025, I needed something to kill the suckers still sprouting up from leftover roots in the soil. Sucker Punch does what the manufacturer says it does. With a bottle in hand, I continue my endless war with unwanted Callery suckers poking up through the soil. As the Bradford is a cultivar of the Callery, it, too, will whither and die from an application of Sucker Punch. The surrounding grass is fine.

The product works well. The sprayer does not. It comes out as a skinny stream, no matter which setting I use.

I am very pleased with this product. I have trained a creosote bush up into a creosote tree, but periodically I get multiple suckers up and down the trunk. You can see the knobs in the pictures where I have cut them off periodically. I cut them off about a month ago and used the Sucker Punch, (it comes with a brush attached to the lid, which is very convenient.) and I am so pleased that they have not returned. I was about to give up on my Creosote tree idea, but I really like it and this product helps amazingly! I have another small tree by my front porch and it gets a lot of suckers and I’ve been using this and it works well with that one also. I highly recommend this product!

We removed a female Tree of Heaven and ground out the stump. We soon realized that the roots continue to flourish even when not attached to the stump. The roots travel long distances from where the tree was, and push up suckers all along the way. I have used this product on the suckers, and it wilts them a little, but it's like using a fine water mist against a raging wildfire. However, this product works pretty well with suckers that stay close to the shrub or tree they come from. So I can recommend it for that type of issue, but those Trees of Heaven are better known as Trees from Hell. SuckerPunch just isn't a practical way to battle the continuing growth all over the property.

It is expensive, but it works. I bought three bottles to cover 10 trees and I have used about half from August through October. I will save the rest for next spring. It saved me time and money in sawing off all those suckers. It works without harming my trees,

This product took a couple applications, but it really did the job.

My front year is about 1K square feet. There is 1 very mature oak tree. We never had root suckers until we had the tree pruned extensively before hurricane season last year. Dozens of suckers have sprouted in the year since then. (Maybe the tree was traumatized). I have used 4 bottles of Sucker Punch to try and contain them. With that said, SP does kill them. My grass is the kind that grows out horizontally......... not vertically like St. Augustine grass, so I can wait until the suckers break through the ground, grow tall enough, then spray as many as I can at the same time. THEN I mow. Cons: 1. Agree with others that the sprayer does not work well. When it gets to the bottom, I add a bit of water to thin it out, so I can use every last expen$ive drop. Cons: 2 An expensive way to treat the lawn, because suckers are like gray hairs: pull one and a dozen more grow in it's place! But, since the sucker leaves have sharp edges and stems, keeping them trimmed is better for the kids playing on (in) the grass. I guess "it's not nice to fool mother nature."