horsetail...

kazschow

Would glyphosate be the best weedkiller to use on this weed? I have an acre field full of it, I am longer term planning to turn half of it into a veggie garden/ orchard, so it needs to go. We had a big reed problem, which is now under cotrol, with improved drainage and glyphosate on the new growth.

Any help very welcome

grandmaster00

in a word


no.....

glyphosate wont touch it and is nasty stuff anyway.. red online about it.

what you wanna try is something called ammonium sulphamate. google it and read about that too.

what you need to do is damage the horsetail, its covered in natural silica, you need to damage this coating by rubbing it together then spray it with the ammonium sulphamate. Even better - mix the weedkiller with some wallpaper paste and paint this on.

you have a serious battle on your hands , this stuff is prehistoric and has a root system upto 5 metres deep.

i expect you have read about it already before posting on here though of course?

PharmaAl

This is quite a good thread on horsetail

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/992705

kazschow

Well with the amount I need clearing, breaking and putting on weedkiller isn't a goer!!! It's a field full not a small area in a garden unfortunately So I think I will try strimming it regularly this year, I've got strim down the rushes anyway. If that does nowt, I'll try out the kibosh. Many thanks.

newsgroup_monkey

Kibosh is now known as "Kurtail" apparently. 1/2 a litre is £24.50 so it's an investment....

I have a problem with Mares tail in so much that it's only on a small part of my allotment at the moment. I'm worried it's going to spread to the whole thing.

I did read that as long as you don't let it grow more than 3 inches tall and you chop it off 1-2 inches under the ground, it'll stop bothering after a while. If anone finds anything organic, do let me know!

valk_scot

You'll never kill it off totally, whatever you spray on it or how much you try to dig it up. It can go down for 20feet underground, it can spread by spores in the spring and it will regenerate from the smallest piece left in the ground. It's been around since the time of the dinosaurs. It's not going to leave just for one puny gardener.

Newsgroup-Monkey, if you've only got a small area, bruise and coat with weedkiller as above, give it a week or two to take the weedkiller down to the roots, dig out as much as possible and burn it. If you see the fruiting bodies (like sticks of asaparagus with a fat rounded tip) then cut them down at once and burn them. Oanother thing....don't transplant anything from your allotment to your house garden, don't put your veg waste in your home compost bin but take it back to the allotment and don't use the same tools in both allotment and garden. Don't give plants to anyone else to plant out in their garden either. Think quarantine. My SIL had horsetail on her allotment site and there was none on my site. I didn't even wear the same shoes on her allotment.

Kazchow, you won't get rid of it either, so content yourself with spraying it now and mowing it down the rest of the time. It will never go away and it won't get much better tbh but you can stop it getting worse if you try hard and keep on top of it. Just try to keep the veg beds clear by hand weeding.

grandmaster00

ammonium sulphamate will kill it used as described above.. it may take a season or 2 though

JodyBPM

I have this throughout my garden, but interestingly, not at all in the lawned areas, so I guess constant mowing must kill it eventually!

I've largely learned to live with it. For small areas that I want to plant into, I have found that contantly digging it out, along with as much root as I can get out is slowly bringing it under control. I don't think that I will ever eradicate it completely, but I have manageable areas of the garden which I use to grow things in, I just need to regularly weed it! I find that doing my first weed as soon as it appears seems much more effective than leaving it a bit later to have established before trying to dig it out! I still have to check the beds weekly for new growth and weed it out, though!

It's a horrible weed, and when we move house I will definitely be checking any prospective houses garden for it. Seeing it in the garden would be enough to put me off a house!

valk_scot

JodyBPM wrote: »

It's a horrible weed, and when we move house I will definitely be checking any prospective houses garden for it. Seeing it in the garden would be enough to put me off a house!

Oh, I so agree with this. I had quite enough of it at my SIL's allotment, belive me. I helped her set it up over her first couple of years and it was soul destroying walking round and seeing the crops totally engulfed in the evil weed, despite weeding the bed well just that past week.

lostinrates

kazschow wrote: »

Well with the amount I need clearing, breaking and putting on weedkiller isn't a goer!!! It's a field full not a small area in a garden unfortunately So I think I will try strimming it regularly this year, I've got strim down the rushes anyway. If that does nowt, I'll try out the kibosh. Many thanks.

You have my sympathy, as I have a weed problem on a large area too. BUT, it is possible to chug away at an acre or too by hand, enlarging the area tackled each time. we've been digging out weeds on our land (we're avoiding spraying as we graze over it as well.). If we clear say, half an acre this year, for long term, we'll be pleased. Each year our band of victory should increase and the roots that grow back hopefully be smaller. the rest we graze and strim. Thankfully ours isn't horsetail.:o