Horsetail!!!

[Gryfon]

Best way to get rid of it?

I've been getting up any rhisomes (sorry can't spell) that I find in the bit I'm digging for my veg, but struggling with that stuff coming up in my herb bed and the front drive

So any ideas? Just keep picking at the top of it?

[Alice]

Hello Gryfon, you have my sympathy. Horsetail really is difficult to deal with. I have it in several patches and have never managed to get rid of it completely but you can keep it under control. You can dig it out but any tiny little bit left will regrow. You really need to use weedkiller of the type which kills right down to the roots. It is difficult to spray as weedkiller just runs off. The theory is you have to bruise the horsetails first but I find this easier said than done. It might be easier to wet them with soapy water which helps the weedkiller to stick on. On your drive, since you don't want to grow anything else there try salt. I use the kind you get for snow (big granules) and found this worked to good effect for weeds on the drive. Killed the wild peas I had been wasting weedkiller on for years. The salt works for cracks in the paths too. But don't put it where you want to grow anything else. Hope you have some success with that.

[multiveg]

Apparently, it does have a use - a foliar feed with all that silica will strenghten seedlings from damping off. Think there is still a US-based website which has details of useful things.

[Gryfon]

Thanks for that. Not sure if my other half will let me kill the drive stuff as he likes it! However as long as it doesn't migrate to the bed through a 3" wall then I'm not too too bothered!

Might also go and harvest it as well!

[leona]

isnt it mares tail or are there different kinds?

[Gryfon]

Actually they are different but often get confused. Mare's Tail flowers whilst Horses Tail doesn't

The horsetails are vascular plants, comprising 15 species of plants in the genus Equisetum.

Hippuris, the Mare's tail, used to be the sole genus in the family Hippuridaceae.

Looked on wikipedia Botany lesson over

[Alice]

Thanks for that Gryfon We're learning every day We'll all end up experts in something or other But either way ones as bad as the other. Thanks to you I've learned it's horses tail I have - and it's getting the salt just the same

[SueA]

My mum-in-law's garden is infested with horsetail & I got fed up with digging it out all the time so covered her borders with black plastic (with tiny pores in it) & mulched over it with a few inches of bark. Amazingly this seems to have stopped most of it although some peeps up around the edges every so often & gets chopped off & covered.