Horsetail, fighting a losing battle?

[FlyingMonkeys]

We've just been issued a lovely allotment patch. Busy getting it dug over, but it's full of horsetail weeds. I've read it will pretty much stand up to anything? Are we going to have an on going battle on our hands? Any experiences welcome thanks

We had it over half of our plot.

We have removed it strand by strand, and it is much much improved. Do not under any circumstances put it back in the compost. i remove ALL perennial weeds, take them home and they go in the brown bin to be hot composted.

Top tip though, as soon as you decide on where your paths go, get them covered so that you only walk on them - and once you have dug over a growing patch, cover with something to stop weeds germinating. Be it cardboard, newspaper; just try not to have any soil showing.

Then when you have plants to go in, cut a cross in the mulch, peel it back, plant, water in and replace the mulch to the stem.

If you have seeds to sow, uncover the row that you want to sow 2 weeks before you are going to sow them, let any weed seeds germinate and how them off before sowing your seeds. [Called a Stale Seed bed]. If you have cut a line down the mulch for your stale seed bed, replace it once the seeds have germinated and grown a little.

Thank you! Lots of great advice there. Good to know it's not going to be unmanageable with the horsetail.

This works Half our site was covered in it, the committee bought a load and it's virtually all cleared now. You have to treat the whole patch though, obviously before anything is planted. The worst plots on our site had to be taken out of use for a year while it was cleared.

If you are allowed to not grow food on it for two years, sow grass seed on the entire plot and feed it with high nitrogen fertilizer. Now and collect the clippings weekly and dispose away from the site.

Mare's tail is a plant of tundra regions. It thrives on poor soil. By lashing fertilizer on it, you actually weaken it. Eventually, you should be able to spray the whole lot off with Glyphosate or the specialist weedkiller for mare's tail whose name I can't remember right now. Scrape off the dead grass layer or rotovate or double dig the whole plot at the end of the second year and you should be ready to start sowing food at the start of year three.

I worked in botanical horticulture and we did this on a herbaceous border that had become infested with the horsetail. It's long term but effective.

Kurtail! That's the stuff!!

I just don't get pouring poison on soil that you are using to grow food.

Kurtail is not a poison. It’s active ingredient is glufosinate.

Glufosinate is a natural compound isolated from two species of Streptomyces fungi. It inhibits the activity of an enzyme, glutamine synthetase, which is necessary for the production of glutamine and for ammonia detoxification. The application of glufosinate leads to reduced glutamine and increased ammonia levels in the plant tissues. This causes photosynthesis to stop and the plant dies within a few days Developed primarily for use with genetically modified resistant crops.
It breaks down on contact with the soil and it is safe to plant within 3 days of use.

ammonium sulphamate Will also kill mailstail but it is banned for sale as a pesticide. You can still buy it online as it is still sold as a compost accelerator. ammonium sulphamate will change the ph levels of the soil but you can usually replant after about 6 weeks.

Can'tspell

Thanks so much for your interesting and informative explanation of how that works. I've been working with pesticides for years and never known that!

Another thank you to cantspell - a fascinating explanation .

Thank you for posting !

Thanks for the excellent & informative advice folks! For now we're going to go down the dig and fertilise route, but I'll be keeping a note of the processing applications to try next year if we seem inundated by it. Thanks again!

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I must admit to copy and pasting the info on kurtail. I remembered reading last year when I was researching the best way to kill off some over grown ivy.

The carpet method of blocking light doesn’t realy work . I know of someone who carpeted a veg patch for 2 years and when lifted there was a mass of live roots still under it and it sent out rhizomes around the edges of the carpet.
Not surprising when this stuff was around when dinosaurs roamed the earth. It is deep rooted with an amazing will to survive.

I use kurtail gold commercially. I'd recommend you use the water adjuvant Progreen sell for use with it. An excellent control, far better than that achieved by bruising the plant before glyphosate application.

Lack of light won't work on horsetail, the roots grow really deep and it thrives on compacted soil. I removed the graveled area from my garden 3 years ago and the horsetail shot up everywhere pretty much over night. The previous owners had also plastic sheeted and carpeted the earth before laying the gravel. If you have the patience, hand weeding does pay off. Get as much of the roots (black stalks) out as you can. I was dubious it would have any effect but I've seen a steady decrease year on year and it hasn't put in an appearance yet this year. I read somewhere that planting raddishes can also help, but no idea whether the science behind that holds any merit.

I didn't know that about poor/impacted soil - I am going to try improving the soil in the patch where we have it. I've had part of that bit of the garden under black tarp for two years (with strawberries planted through) and while I didn't get any horsetail during the 2 years, it's now coming up from the adjacent field. The other part of the garden that has horsetail has been mulched a few times with pine bark in that time and the horsetail is still there but it's a lot easier to pull out.