Plant ID - Is it horsetail?

[Pea79]

I do have some horsetail sprouting up in this area of my garden, which I am about to treat with Kurtail Evo weed killer. However, this plant feels softer and looks slightly different, so I'm not sure if it's horsetail or not. It looks like it has tiny yellow flowers on the ends. I don't want to kill this plant if it's not warranted. Thank you!

That doesn't look like horsetail to me. I don't think horsetail flowers.

We get a lot of horsetail in our garden - it's the bane of my life!

@tigger1001

Thank you! I will try to preserve this plant when attempting to kill off the horsetail. Only moved into this house in January and the horsetail has just popped up. It seems fairly contained to one section of the garden so far.

Horsetail doesn't flower, it produces spores.

I wonder if it could be marestail? From what i've read the two are often confused but horsetail is perennial and doesn't flower whereas marestail is an annual and does flower. I would get rid if it is.

The flowers are little blobs at the moment? try splitting one open - I think that could be a coreopsis

Looks like cosmos to me without my glasses on 😂 I like to think positive 😆

I think Cosmos too

Not horsetail. Have you used Kurtail before? We have loads in our garden, I am constantly pulling it out but there's areas of the garden where it has taken over. I stopped using weedkiller a couple of years ago but I am at a loss with this horsetail!

Does kurtail work? I've tried everything to get rid of horsetail and it just gets stronger!

I’d have said that was cosmos too, or nigella? Yellow is a bit odd though - wait for one to open.

I would like to know if it works too. It's such a nightmare to get rid of it - it seems to be immune to most weed killers

I did a spray with Kurtail Evo approximately 5 weeks ago (our entire garden - 1000sqm - is covered in blasted horsetail). It definitely worked, but it worked a little too well as it’s killed every single thing it’s touched; including the grass. The horsetail is very much dead though.

If the Kurtail hadn’t worked I was planning on using ammonium sulphamate compost accelerator as that is apparently a magic bullet for horsetail. It can’t be sold as weedkiller in the UK though, so if you buy some just make sure you don’t mention using it for horsetail!

Not horsetail definitely

I got rid of my horsetail by making a mixture of readymade wallpaper paste and adding high concentration glyphosate. It was in different bits of borders between established plants. I used gloves, sort of rubbed horsetail a bit with a stone first time - to break cuticle (don't know if this helped) - then painted on the mixture, maybe flattening it to the ground or pinning it down with a rock so that it didn't touch other plants. Kept the pot handy and did it repeatedly.
It all died.

Is something with glyphosate the only way to go then to get rid of it? The area of the garden where it is most rampent is where I want to plan veg next year and normal weed suppression just hasn't worked.

Following with interest. DDs little house, backing into woods, has a tiny garden filled with horsetail, according to a plant app match. Doesn’t look like this. It grows like asparagus at first then turns into This

I know marestail in two contexts 1) an alternative name for horsetail 2) an aquatic plant. Is there another plant known as marestail?

Is there another plant known as marestail?
Erigeron canadensis

Does that kill grass too? I am desperate to get rid of the horsetail but paid a fortune for turf not that long ago so don't want to kill off the grass

The ammonium sulphamate will probably kill the grass too, unfortunately.

I used this stuff before trying the Kurtail Evo and it worked well on the horsetail and didn't kill anything else (apart from some brambles I was glad to see the back of). The horsetail did regrow and I was facing having to spray 4-5x a year for 2-3 years which would've been really expensive - hence bringing in the big guns :).

Much as I dislike the use of sprays and herbicides, on occasion, it is a neccessary evil! There are various products formulated for use in turfcare and greenkeeping, to kill broadleaved annual and perennial species without harming grass - any of these will kill Marestail, but, and it is a big but, they may only be sold to, or used by, those who have received recognised professional herbicide application training:
Depitox
Blaster Pro
Pastor Plus
Icade
Grazon Plus
These are trade names and other similar products are available.

A product which may be used by amateurs, again without killing grass, is:
SKB Brushwood killer

Is it Cosmos or Nigella?

Sorry, that should be SBK Brushwood Killler.

Kurtail contains glyphosate and will, therefore, kill grass as well as your target species as it is a non selective herbicide

No need to panic. It’s a weed called Corn Spurry (Spergula arvensis). Picture in link below not very helpful, but plenty more images on google

www.plantlife.org.uk/uk/discover-wild-plants-nature/plant-fungi-species/corn-spurrey

Doesn't look like that or the description of that to me.
It looks like cosmos or nigella to me.

I managed to get rid of horsetail by pulling it up (I hate using weedkiller personally) you just need to pull as much as the root out as possible I went from a garden full to a few bits here and there