Grow Your Own Magazine

Hi there,

A little bit of history surrounding my garden. For yeas prior, it has been a jungle of weeds - so this year i decided to cut the grass back, ad weedkill the weed section - after 2 weeks, i dug a little section of the weeds out (veg section) and planted some onion sets, lettuce and potatoes - this was about 6 wees ago. So far, the onionsets are not doing great, nor are the lettuce- but the potatoes seem fine. I'm not overly concerned as any crop this year is a bonus.

In the meantime, i had been weedkilling the remaining patch every 2 weeks or so with sodium chlorite - and last week i finaly dug it all up - and will continue to weed kill.

my dilema is, the weeds are coming back, and up and through my veg - thick andfast! I am unsure what kind of wed it is, but pic 2 shows it. Do I:

a) Cut my loses with the small crop i have and concentrate on killing the weeds off (currently i can only snap the weedsoff, i cannot get into the root system)
b) Continue with my veg section and try and kep on top of these weeds although this i provin very difficult.

As i understand it sodium clorite can stay in the soil for 6 months - which woudl mean i couldnt really star tweedkilling the veg patch till i harvested what i have.

Any help is geatly appreciated,
thanks,
Neil

Garden:


Weed:

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Bike Vietnam Challenge for Cerebral Palsy
16th - 27th October 2008
www.neilbikevietnam.com

Hi Neil,

I'm afraid to say it looks like a weed called marestail - I have an allotment infested with it. I recently posted a thread asking for advice on how to deal with it - you should be able to find it in "weeds, pests and diseases" - i got some good advice. Seems though there isnt an awful lot you can do about this one, as apparently it's roots go on forever! I've taken to hoeing it down as soon as it come through in the hope that eventually it will give up and go away

Sodium chlorate is a cheap and nasty weedkiller that CAN leave you ground impotent for years.
It's a residual weedkiller and I can't for the life of me understand why it hasn't been banned to be honest! It forms a gaseous layer in the soil killing any plantlife as it germinates.
Only to be used on gravel paths I would think as it has a tendency to 'creep'!

I don't like using any weedkillers myself, but if I was to use them I would use something that was glphosate based. Glphosate is a systemic weedkiller which once absorbed by the plant travels through it's system killing it. It supposedly becomes inert on contact with the soil and has no effect on future plant germination/growth.

For mares taill, the foliage is best scuffed before application to break the water repellant coating.

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

If it was mine, I wouldn't use any more weedkiller. The problem is that you have bare soil now, so any weed seeds in the soil are having a field day with all that empty space! I would get my hands on lots of thick cardboard boxes, spread them over the soil and then cover it with some compost, or manure. This will prevent light getting to the weeds & stop any more from germinating, and will also give you lovely soil next year when the weather & worms have broken it down. Alternatively, you could invest in some weed suppressing fabric and cover the ground with that.
As to the horse-tail weed, it's fine to just keep pulling the tops off it - this does weaken it eventually, and it doesn't really take much 'nutrition' away from your growing veg. To boost the veg you've got in already you could feed them with some chicken manure pellets, or some Growmore pellets.

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Sarah

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

The cardboard box idea sounds like a plan! - Does it rot into the soil?

My friend can probably get me mountains of the stuff - it woudl however ean a dozen trips to the tip with my brown bin - but i need to do this anyway, as the level of my soil is a good few inches down.......and top soil is expensive!!!

many thanks for all your help!

Neil

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Bike Vietnam Challenge for Cerebral Palsy
16th - 27th October 2008
www.neilbikevietnam.com

also - can i ho these weeds? My dad said if it is lft on the soil, it will seed into more weeds

Neil

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Bike Vietnam Challenge for Cerebral Palsy
16th - 27th October 2008
www.neilbikevietnam.com

Yes, you can hoe horse-tail - it doesn't spread by seed it sends out spores when the little branch bits start opening out.

The cardboard does rot down, it depends on the weather how fast it goes. The worms will much through it, and it will improve the structure of your soil, although it doesn't add much in the way of nutrients.

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Sarah

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

Sarzwix,

thanks for the response.

What do you mean by "sends out spores" ? - Does this mean its ok to just hoe thorugh the root and leave? (i literally have hundreds a week! )

thanks again,
Neil

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Bike Vietnam Challenge for Cerebral Palsy
16th - 27th October 2008
www.neilbikevietnam.com

OK, i managed to hoe all my weeds down - ive just left on the soil, as there are literally hundreds!!!

Neil

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Bike Vietnam Challenge for Cerebral Palsy
16th - 27th October 2008
www.neilbikevietnam.com

If they are tiny its probably OK to leave them, but personally I could collect them all into a bin liner, being careful not to give them the chance to "drop" anywhere they are not already growing, and put them in the rubbish bin.

"What do you mean by "sends out spores" "

They don't produce flowers, and then seeds, like a "normal plant". They produce spores instead. Those will blow, probably for miles, on the wind. So keeping hoeing the plants so they never get very big is a good way of trying to prevent them getting to the "sends out spores" stage.

Mares tail has been around for about 6 million years so has learnt how to survive. You won't get rid of it just learn to live with it and keep it under control. Any method of control will take time. The spores which is one method of reproduction appear in spring. However the main form is the ability for any bits that are chopped off to sprout a top growth. I dont find heoing any benefit as where you hoe off the top it will then sprout multiple shoots. I pull up and try to get just below the surface and if you are lucky it will snap of 5/6 inches below the surface, which will take strength out of the plant to grow back to the surface. You can use a trowel to assist with the pulling and use the trowel like a lever as you pull. A storage tank was recently put into a garden next to the allotments. The hole was about 20 ft deep and the rootds of the mares tail was found 20 ft down. The tails can be boiled and the liquid used to control fungal deseases like grey mould on onions and rust on plants.

Ian

6 million years? More like 300 million years.

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Mark

Vegetable Kingdom blog

Whats a couple of million between friends!

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My Majesty made for him a garden anew in order
to present to him vegetables and all beautiful flowers.- Offerings of Thutmose III to Amon-Ra (1500 BCE)

Hoeing is quite useful, so long as you do it below the surface - as long as you're slicing through the black bit of the root, it's goin to take energy to resprout

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Sarah

“Tell me one last thing,” said Harry. “Is this real? Or has this been happening inside my head?”
“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?”

there are literally hunreds of these weeds appearing every week - i am really struggling to keep on top of them

Neil

__________________
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Bike Vietnam Challenge for Cerebral Palsy
16th - 27th October 2008
www.neilbikevietnam.com

Horsetail can survive flooding & burning! It is also fairly resistant to weedkiller, as you have discovered.

Horsetail (Equisetum Arvensis) is difficult to control because new plants regenerate from fragments of stem and tubers. (cutting it up & leaving it on the soil simply produces 100s of potential new plants).

Black plastic sheeting has been found to kill or suppress horsetail in the upper layers of soil. However emerging stems can penetrate some woven polypropylene sheeting.

Control measures on arable land include ... improvements in soil texture and persistent cutting. In grass, regular mowing over a period of years may eliminate horsetail.

The good newsHorsetail is not very competitive in tall crops. The lack of functional leaves may make it intolerant of shading. If I were you I would hoe off what you have, and drown the bits in a bucket of water (when stinky you can pour this nutritious mix on the garden as a feed). Then cover the soil with a thick mulch of sodden cardboard, several inches thick, leaving no gaps. This should kill off a lot of your horsetail ~ you should cut off any that still appear.

Until you've controlled it, grow your crops in containers, or else the horsetail will come up amongst your plants and be a nightmare (mare, get it? )
Field horsetail - Weed information - Organic Weed Management

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~ What do I think of Western civilisation? I think it would be a very good idea ~ Gandhi

Thanks for that T.S., very helpful.

Yeh its marestail/horsetail. I would spray it with glypfosate a couple of times. Dont dig it in when its dead but burn it. Its started on my lottie and can be kept under control as long as its not left.

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good Diggin, Chuffa.