--
"mulroys" wrote in message
...
I'm afraid that my yard is overrun with the things. They are quite
prehistoric, and I actually have a shale fossil of a plant that is very
similar.

I've been pulling them for a year, but if I leave the tiniest bit of root,
they just grow back.

I've tried paraquat, glyphosphate, and 2-4-d. They seem to enjoy it.

I don't want to use a soil sterilizer, but I'm stumped.

Thank you in advance

I have to agree with everyone who has replied to you on this one. I had no
idea what I had dug up from my neighbor's yard next door and brought with me
over here to Eastern Tennessee. I planted it with the other perennials at
the rental house in White Pine and when we found this place in 1995 and
bought it, I moved all the perennials here. The horsetail I planted UNDER A
LEAKING GUTTER SPOUT.........................oh lord, it had behaved at the
rental house because it was in clay soil. I moved all the worm soil in bags
along with the perennials, and once we tilled up the front sliver of yard
for the holding bed, I would have done the same if I'd fed it Miracle Gro.
Rich, loose soil, endless deluges of rainwater. It was in horsetail heaven.
I discovered it's tenacity and evilness of intent of establishing that very
year in a gardening book. I was appalled. I went out and dug it up. I
thought. Next spring, I am standing looking at the emerging constipated
flowerbeds of my new house and see seven feet away from where I have planted
it, very happy and TALL horsetail. I look at the spot where it used to be
under the downspout and see little shoots. I dig it up. I place a board in
the raised bed of rich soil to keep from compacting it, and dig up six, SIX
clumps of horsetail and send them flying over the fence into the pasture.
(they died by not being planted, I checked later to see).

That was nine years ago. Every year I spot another tentative shoot of it
poking out of the immediate region of that eastern flowerbed. I carefully
pull it, trying to get as much root as I can. I'm weakening the root by
removing the stems. And it is neat looking. Last year's plug I potted up and
sunk into the BBQ pit/fountain for a pond plant. It loves it there. And it
can't spread because it's in a pot in that spot. And this year I pulled up
another clump of it near where the original was. The only thing worse than
this horsetail for reemerging is the trumpet vine I brought from Mary Emma's
that I have planted at the mercury light pole at the edge and entrance to
the western yard and it's either germinating seeds from the pods I didn't
snip off, or the shoots are that spreading and far reaching and are popping
up in the flowerbed. I know pulling it isn't removing it. It's woodier
than the horsetail. And where the second vine used to reside against a half
dead maple, I am still pulling shoots and whole vines of it out of three
spots, including the one that germinated from a seed under the small
boardwalk that leads to the den and nook. I realize until I poison it
completely (risking my other treasured perennials in the NSSG, not so secret
garden) I will be forever pulling the shoots up.

You will NEVER remove the horsetail. Using RoundUp and gods forbid,
paraquat?? just pull it after a soaking rain and you'll weaken the root
system and eventually you'll see less shoots of it. No telling what you're
doing to surrounding enviroments with all this stuff. Including the ground
water. It HAS survived since dinosaurs. So it will be here long after
we've moved on...............
madgardener

Humankind has not woven the web of life.
We are but one thread within it.
Whatever we do to the web, we do to ourselves.
All things are bound together.
All things connect." Chief Seattle