Horse Radish

[Greenleaves]

Good evening all

Toying with the idea of growing Horse Radish next year and wondered if it will grow happily in containers? Any advice?

[roitelet]

Tried it in a deep container and all I got was skinny roots, no good to anyone. It needs deep soil and is invasive.

[Kristen]

I would definitely grow it in a container, AND stand it on a paving slab. Its a menace if it escapes into the garden!

[Chippy Minton]

We grew it in an old potato barrel, seems to love it, compost is very poor. However agree with Kristen, it liked the container, until it spotted a weakness in the bottom, got a taste for freedom and escaped, luckily only onto a path but it is now popping up around the path....

Also not entirely sure what I'm going to do with it all, this year it's all coming out and I'll decide if I put a couple of thin bits back in

Oh and the compost is going straight to the council composting centre!

[More basil]

Hmmm, yes. I put a bit bit of root in a tall but narrow bucket this spring as an experiment and largely forgot about it. It has still managed to produce sideshoots. Expansive doesn't really cover it. Still, I love horse radish, it is a bit like Northern chilli. I do like the way the cultures all over the world have found ways of adding a bit of woo-hoo to their national cuisine.

[Seagull]

Argh! Don't talk to me about the stuff! Whoever had my plot before me planted some and it is IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of. The roots are too big and hard to dig up entirely and it's spreading everywhere! It's becoming more of a problem than the bind weed, and that's saying something.

[sparrow100]

One of my neighbours rotavated his...'nuff said.

[Greenleaves]

Thanks all

Containers it is

[Small pumpkin]

Argh! Don't talk to me about the stuff! Whoever had my plot before me planted some and it is IMPOSSIBLE to get rid of. The roots are too big and hard to dig up entirely and it's spreading everywhere! It's becoming more of a problem than the bind weed, and that's saying something.

I'm with you all the way on this. Which ever bright spark planted it in the veggie patch before I moved in, put it in 2 beds! One of those beds is now covered by my polytunnel because I didn't know it was there! It loves the tunnel. All the beds were covered from June to the March with a thick layer of manure and heaven duty weed suppressant because they were in such a bad way. The horse radish just carried on growing. I dug every visible root (even the ones that were just over 1mm thick, it took me 3 weeks!) out as deep as I can go. going over every inch of the bed. I've tried roundup. This autumn I will be doing it all again

Personally I wouldn't grow horse radish.
If anyone can tell me how to kill it, I would be very very happy

[Kristen]

If anyone can tell me how to kill it, I would be very very happy

Likely to take several seasons Digging out as much as you can, as you have done, is the best first step, then digging up anything that appears in the spring (try to get as much root out as you can, but depends on the crop that you are growing of course) which will further weaken it, and then I would use Roundup/Glyphosate thereafter on anything that emerges. You'll need a small hand-held sprayer or somesuch so that you can get it onto the horseradish rather than any plants around it. I would aim to repeat spray at least one a month, perhaps even once a fortnight; I aim to use weedkiller here once a fortnight just to catch any odds and sods in the drive and bindweed amongst plants, but in practice the wind doesn't drop enough often enough, so when the fortnight deadline is up it can be a week or more before the weather is right (can't use it if rain is forecast within 6?? hours) so it tends to wind up nearer once a month for me)

I've been using a Hozelock Wonderweeder this year (on Bindweed in my ornamental garden) and it works well. Tiny tank though, so doesn't go far, and definitely not suited to anything other than spot weeding - I see people writing negative reviews that they are trying to treat large areas of weeds - that job needs a sprayer!


Wonderweeder: 4182 - Hozelock

[alldigging]

We got some for the community garden from the garden centre and it didn't grow.