Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: Chris Anderson on July 16, 2021, 13:17
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Last year we had some local manure delivered and it seems to have introduced horsetail to our raised beds, and it is creating havoc. Our potatoes have been choked and it is spreading like wildfire. We don't use pesticides and try to stay organic.Any help or advice please, as the weed is spreading. I've pulled out lots, but read it has a very long tap root.
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Keep pulling it out “Never let it see a Sunday”.
It’s been with us since the dinosaurs and its roots can go down 2 metres. It likes poor soil, so add plenty of organic material to open it up.
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It also creeps underground and like bindweed, if any breaks off a new shoot grows.
It also produces spores in Feb/March time, just a small tip is above the soil surface.
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A possible method of eradicating Mare's tail (although I haven't tried it myself) is to crush the mare's tail leaves but leave the plant otherwise undisturbed and submerge the crushed leaves in a solution of a systemic weedkiller holding the leaves in the solution with a suitable weight. Good luck if you decide to follow this up. Cheers, Tony.
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Before we moved last year I had quite a bit in various places which was difficult to get rid of but our new home is absolutely rife with it! I dug loads out but it soon developed into a forest and even comes up between the mortar in the paving outside. :mad: There is no way of even minimising it so I resorted to a chemical approach and found some stuff that really works a treat. It is a very difficult decision to make when you don't want to use herbicides so maybe just see how you go with it for now.
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While I applaud anyone who tries to garden organically, and without using stuff which has 'harmful' side effects and 'may' harm nature, the answer really has to be, 'do you want to just eat stuff from the supermarket, which has been chemically sprayed, or do you want to be unable to grow anything because you're swamped with such an evil plant'?
There are far too many banned substances around now, and as we're out of the dreaded EU, we can make up our own minds now. No more 'thought police' from Brussels thank you very much!
As far as I know, normal gardeners on the continent take hardly any notice of regulations over there, and my collection of Bordeaux mixture is still safe in the shed - maybe labelled 'Blue rinse'...
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We were plagued with it at the plot. We sifted every bit of soil mainly to get rid of broken glass, nails etc. It disappeared for a few years, but last year it showed up again.
I just dig it out when it appears.
I find, unlike bindweed, that stuff can grow next to it. It is just a nuisance we have to put up with.
A plot neighbour spent a fortune on a professionals only chemical treatment, but it didn't work.
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Last year we had some local manure delivered and it seems to have introduced horsetail to our raised beds, and it is creating havoc. Our potatoes have been choked and it is spreading like wildfire. We don't use pesticides and try to stay organic.Any help or advice please, as the weed is spreading. I've pulled out lots, but read it has a very long tap root.
We have some horsetail on the croft. We have never taken specific measures to remove it but it is very noticeable that it only grows in certain areas. It likes the top of the hill where the weather is worst & leaching means that nitrogen is lowest. It dislikes the areas that are most tilled and manured.
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If you can boil a kettle of water near enough to some of it, trickle boiling water down the stems so that it gets to the roots. Cheap, helps and sure as heck makes you feel better. But won't go far on a large area. :nowink:
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Keep pulling it out “Never let it see a Sunday”.
It’s been with us since the dinosaurs and its roots can go down 2 metres. It likes poor soil, so add plenty of organic material to open it up.
. . . Actually even older. I have fossils of horsetails that are from the Carboniferous, which I collected in Alabama. There were trilobites in the oceans then, no dinosaurs yet!
Having collections of fossils (and minerals, and rocks) is a symptom of being a geologist. Unfortunately (for Mrs. Subversive), there is no cure.
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I've long had a theory, that with hideous plants like horsetail, bindweed etc, some enterprising weed-killer manufacturer should 'invent' a method of getting rid of the pests by designing some sort of 'clamp' rather like a ladies' clutch comb for long hair, (sorry ladies, it's not meant to hurt YOU), maybe a bulldog clip style, which grips the stem, delivers the killer potion and sees off the menace!
I tried to kill off the brambles which infest our hedges with neat Roundup, appled to a part of the bramble after squeezing and crushing the stems with a pair of pliers. It sort of worked, but they came back again a year later, so maybe a repeat performance is needed...
Probably a method which is too labour-intensive on a larger area though...
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It's curious . . .
Our horsetail around here does not seem to be all that invasive. Maybe it's a different species? Or just doesn't become invasive in this climate?
I've seen it grown in at least 3 different locations as an ornamental. One at the University of Georgia, one at the Atlanta Botanical Garden (outside the Fuqua Orchid Center), one outside an Atlanta restaurant. All plantings apparently to display the architectural foliage of the reed-like fertile stems.
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It's curious . . .
Our horsetail around here does not seem to be all that invasive. Maybe it's a different species?
There are a couple of cultivated versions here in the UK SP. They are mainly used as marginal pond plants and are quite attractive with reed like leaves in stripy green and black.
The wild weed one is just green and more a tuft of fine leaves.
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Is somebody trying to wind me up, talking about horse/mares tail? ;)
I have enough on my plot to construct a small cabin!
I have assiduously dug everything by fork only, removing even the smallest bit of "The Weed of Satan" as I went along. Yesterday I harvested half of my radish, hoed and raked the ground ready for some lettuce, and when I went there this morning, that half was sprouting with mares tail. Someone on the allotment told me that the only real way of stopping them, short of an atomic blast, is to keep moving the ground, i.e. digging, forking, hoeing, etc.
However, I have made some observations of my own, but I don't know if I'm actually right, or inwardly trying to persuade myself that I am. Mares tail are lazy. They don't like competition. I had tall weedy grass on the plot when I took it over, and no sign of mares tail. But when I weed-killed the grass and burnt it, the mares tail came flying through over a single weekend. And I also notice that they tend to grow right next to a plant, using the plant to push a way through the soil for them. Maybe I'm just dreaming.
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Its invaded parts of our plot. We put down plastic then sieved soil into raised beds. Lovely soil but still got mairstail. Pull out ok, just hope that once pulled out this year will be free of it in those beds. Use weedkiller on paths and boundaries and you have to get the timing right, pull up in other areas and have tried cardboard with manure a la no dig on a couple of beds. Had same problem of infected manure first time but notice seems reduced this year. If i can get more cardboard Im going to repeat again. I won't win as it is inbetween established rhubarb, rasberries ans shrubs but I thought it liked wet, clay soil so working on improving drainage and digging. May try making a tea from it to get some use out of it but at the mo only have time for comfry tea.
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It's curious . . .
Our horsetail around here does not seem to be all that invasive. Maybe it's a different species?
There are a couple of cultivated versions here in the UK SP. They are mainly used as marginal pond plants and are quite attractive with reed like leaves in stripy green and black.
The wild weed one is just green and more a tuft of fine leaves.
Ours looks different, and looking it up, it is a different species. This is it, Equisetum laevigatum: http://www.calflora.net/bloomingplants/smoothscouringrush.html (http://www.calflora.net/bloomingplants/smoothscouringrush.html)
I think there are other types in different parts of North America, some of which can be weedy.
Later, I'll try to add photos of my fossil horsetails if anyone is interested. You probably have the same fossil types near your coal mines.
Added a photo (stem of fossil horsetail called Calamites), I collected this near Birmingham (not your Birmingham, the other one, in Alabama). I'll bet you're glad you don't need to pull that out of the allotment beds!
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Slightly off-topic, but we never seem to hear about Japanese Knotweed here anymore!
A few years ago, I had to do a site visit in Wandsworth (London), and saw a patch of the stuff which was actually breaking up a concrete slab, and threatening a solid brick wall next to it!
Nasty, invasive and now notifiable...
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Before we moved last year I had quite a bit in various places which was difficult to get rid of but our new home is absolutely rife with it! I dug loads out but it soon developed into a forest and even comes up between the mortar in the paving outside. :mad: There is no way of even minimising it so I resorted to a chemical approach and found some stuff that really works a treat. It is a very difficult decision to make when you don't want to use herbicides so maybe just see how you go with it for now.
What did you use?
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This was in a recent rag article...
Not that inspiring and generally uninteresting, but there again, it's only a rag, not a proper scientific piece!
https://www.express.co.uk/life-style/garden/1467474/how-to-get-rid-of-mares-tail-horsetail-top-tips-EVG
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Before we moved last year I had quite a bit in various places which was difficult to get rid of but our new home is absolutely rife with it! I dug loads out but it soon developed into a forest and even comes up between the mortar in the paving outside. :mad: There is no way of even minimising it so I resorted to a chemical approach and found some stuff that really works a treat. It is a very difficult decision to make when you don't want to use herbicides so maybe just see how you go with it for now.
What did you use?
It's called Kurtail Evo. I got the smaller quantity as a little goes a long way. It's got some type of liquid soap in it as it's very gloopy to pour and produces a foam when you spray it which helps it to stick on the weed. The very next day it looked as if it was getting a bit of a headache then it turned brown within a week. Some more came up which I treated, then I've just got a few bits left unless there's more to come due to the today's rain.
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According to HSE Kurtail is only licensed for use by professionals I think.
https://secure.pesticides.gov.uk/pestreg/getfullproduct.asp?productid=37662&pageno=1&origin=prodsearch
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According to HSE Kurtail is only licensed fro use by professionals I think.
https://secure.pesticides.gov.uk/pestreg/getfullproduct.asp?productid=37662&pageno=1&origin=prodsearch
Yes that's correct. Our former plot neighbour spent a lot of money on it. It looked to have succeeded, but promptly all grew again.
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We have it on our allotment. This is my fourth season and there's nothing like the amount of marestail there was in our first year and what does come up is spindly and smaller than in previous seasons. I just keep pulling it up - no chemicals involved - just part of weeding as far as I'm concerned. I don't expect to ever get rid of it all because it's such an invasive wee beast and it will keep trying to creep back in.
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Just add a few drops of washing up liquid to your weedkiller works better than kurtaill and far cheaper