How to kill horsetails?
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 |
Dig out the area and replace the dirt is the only thing I can think of.
Personally I'm trying to get some established in a pot in my pond Shell "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 |
"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 You have to admire, even if grudgingly, a plant that is capable of withstanding everything nature and man have thrown at it since the Triassic... If you keep at it long enough, eventually you will starve the last of the rhizomes. But it takes a lot of patience to outlast something that prehistoric. -- Chris Green |
On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 19:26:51 -0700, mulroys wrote:
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. Yup. Perhaps you can arrange to trade yards with the person in the "sectional grass" thread. I've tried paraquat, glyphosphate, and 2-4-d. They seem to enjoy it. Casoron (dichlobenil) is what seems to be used most in the PNW. Haven't tried it, but I suspect it's also going to need timing in applications, and repeated applications. Oust is another that's sometimes used; again, I have no experience with it. Black plastic will work, but it's ugly as ... mulch won't. I doubt solarization will help, at least with the deep-rooted species. Try google for equisetum and control Kay http://www.agf.gov.bc.ca/cropprot/hrsetail.htm http://ipcm.wisc.edu/uw_weeds/extens...nhorsetail.htm |
On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 19:26:51 -0700, "mulroys"
wrote: ===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 === Take advantage of having it and dig it and pot it and sell it on ebay to the pond entuhusiasts. We had been looking for some all summer long but all the sotres that carry it were sold out in early spring.Very popular with ponders....... Visit my website: http://www.frugalmachinist.com Opinions expressed are those of my wife, I had no input whatsoever. Remove "nospam" from email addy. |
-- "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 |
glyphosate works, you just have to aplly is a few times and use a higher
concentration. Toad |
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Great! I got a half acre of the things. I guess that makes me the
horsetail tycoon. "Roy" wrote in message ... On Mon, 23 Aug 2004 19:26:51 -0700, "mulroys" wrote: ===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 === Take advantage of having it and dig it and pot it and sell it on ebay to the pond entuhusiasts. We had been looking for some all summer long but all the sotres that carry it were sold out in early spring.Very popular with ponders....... Visit my website: http://www.frugalmachinist.com Opinions expressed are those of my wife, I had no input whatsoever. Remove "nospam" from email addy. |
On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 08:35:32 -0400, "madgardener"
wrote: 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 To the original poster, sell the place and move away. Either that, or maybe nuclear weapons, but somehow I think the horsetail would even survive that. |
We already tried the nukes. My boys like their new blond hair.
I can't decide weather to just learn to like the things, or plant a bunch of mint and then film next summer's hit monster movie. "Horstail vs. Mint." -In the garden no one can hear you curse... "Paul Below" wrote in message ... On Tue, 24 Aug 2004 08:35:32 -0400, "madgardener" wrote: 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 To the original poster, sell the place and move away. Either that, or maybe nuclear weapons, but somehow I think the horsetail would even survive that. |
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Salty Thumb wrote in message news:ZikXc.2153$Cc.1690@trnddc07...
(Christopher Green) wrote in om: You have to admire, even if grudgingly, a plant that is capable of withstanding everything nature and man have thrown at it since the Triassic... Horsetails have been around since the Devonian if not earlier which means they also survived whatever cause the Permian extinctions. However, it's possible they can be displaced by other more advanced plants given the right environmental conditions, though this may require a herbivore that mows them down repeatedly.. The class Sphenopsida does go back to the Devonian, and the order Equisetales was the only order of sphenopsids to survive the Permian extinction. If the extinct genus Equisetites is really the same as modern Equisetum, as some think, then Equisetum goes back to the Carboniferous, survived the Permian extinction, and is the oldest living genus of vascular plants. Problem with grazing them is they're poisonous (especially to horses, but also to other livestock). Equisetosis is a common ailment when animals are pastured on horsetail-infested fields. Other than that, have you tried harnessing the most destructive force known to man: a group of pre-school kids? Perhaps a game of "pin the horsetail on the dustbin modified to look like a donkey" is in order. Paid a penny bounty on snails once. A hundred dollars didn't put a dent in the snail population. Grazing or letting kids pillage it won't do any good with horsetail anyway, because it comes back from rhizomes that can run as deep as six feet. Dichlobenil (Casoron) is the rancher's poison of choice for horsetail. It just snickers at gardeners armed with glyphosate (Roundup, Kleenup). -- Chris Green |
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