Author Topic: Mares Tail  (Read 2499 times)

gardenqueen

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Mares Tail
« on: July 01, 2017, 10:48:23 »
You have probably been asked how to get rid of this plant many times! How do you get rid of it?  :BangHead:  Luckily it is only in one part of my garden but seems to be appearing everywhere by the minute and at the moment my OH goes round and pulls it out.

MervF

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Re: Mares Tail
« Reply #1 on: July 01, 2017, 11:33:19 »
I had this on the plot I had 2 years ago and struggled to get rid of it for the 15 years I worked it.   All we could do was to dig out as much of the root as possible.   As far as I know there is nothing that will actually completely eradicate it unless something has come on the market in the last couple of years.   It did not seem to affect the crops - it is just a ****** nuisance.

Tee Gee

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Re: Mares Tail
« Reply #2 on: July 01, 2017, 13:56:38 »
What I found on a plot I inherited was the more I hoed it and the more soil improvements I made such as getting the fertility and pH better, the mares tail seemed to just disappear.

My assumption was that Mares tail seems to like 'poor acidic soil and minimal competition for any available nutrients.

As I improved the soil and got my soil to around 6.5pH, this, along with  the hoeing (often weekly) and the growing of  heavy feeding plants such as potatoes seemed to do the trick.

Now the bad news: It took a few years of this regime to eradicate it!

picman

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Re: Mares Tail
« Reply #3 on: July 01, 2017, 15:36:17 »
Its one of the things you have to live with.. just dig it out as much root as you can, It goes down deep 2 to 3 feet , try not to leave any bits to grow again,  I did read somewhere you can kill it with too much fertiliser , concentrated  sulphate of ammonia I believe but not tried it, been a nuisance on my plots fro 15 years... ,

gardenqueen

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Re: Mares Tail
« Reply #4 on: July 02, 2017, 20:13:47 »
The soil isn't the best I must admit! Sounds as though I am going to have to improve the soil and wait some years for it to disappear, oh well  :BangHead:

Beersmith

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Re: Mares Tail
« Reply #5 on: July 02, 2017, 22:42:43 »
Here is a comment copied from a similar discussion, a couple of years ago. You may find it interesting.

Having a manifestation of marestail on a third of my new plot, I set about erradicating it.

I bought - or so I thought - a compost activator (ammonium sulphamate), which simply forces the plant to destroy itself and is the closest thing that you can get to a 100% solution to marestail. It is a bit brutal, though, killing everything around it and remaining active in the soil for about three months before breaking down into fertiliser. As such, it can't be used everywhere.

I began to get bizarre results. I sprayed, the marestail died, but everything else around it remained alive. I tried spraying other weeds, but mostly there was only scorching to the leaves; they survived. I checked the box: it wasn't ammonium sulphamate that I had bought, but rather ammonium sulphate, a fertiliser used on alkaline soils to make them more acidic!

As many of you will know, marestail/horsestail prefers marginal ground where other weeds don't often grow and hates very fertile soil. By applying the fertilser, I had reduced the PH of the soil and the marestail died. It has acted as a selective herbicide. Weird, eh?
Not mad, just out to mulch!

 

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