Topic: Marestail & Bindweed under my plot's paths

[Harry]

My quarter plot is separated into 6 sections by paths made of carpet squares. Similar path between plots. Just under the surface of the carpet squares are marestail and bindweed roots. I spent much of this, my first year, removing marestail from the beds, but obvious enough, the stuff crept in under the carpet.
1) Is it worth lifting those paths to try to pull the weed roots? I'm thinking yes. I'm actually thinking of losing half the paths.
2) I can get masses of free chipped tree prunings. Would that be better to use to remake the paths? With or without the carpet layer?
3) My beds are surrounded by rotting wood, which marks the perimeter, but is falling to bits. Worth replacing or just remove and let the paths be the only demarcation. If you see my meaning. The beds are only a few inches higher than the paths.
4) I like FREE, but is chipped tree prunings useful as a mulch for root veg, strawberry and raspberry beds? I can get unlimited free supply, but I understand it's too 'brown' to be much use in composting.

Hoping to hit the ground running in my second year.

[Paulh]

My experience with bindweed is that a layer of (thick) cardboard with a wood chip mulch on top defeats it. I don't know about mare's tail. I'd treat your paths like that and weed out (or use weedkiller on) anything that comes through. Doing that let's you make good use of your free wood chippings too!

[JanG]

I would also store as much wood chip as you have space for and wait for it to rot down down, then use as a mulch quite freely. You can just pile it up in an odd corner or use pallets etc to make a tidier pile Even half rotted is good for things like fruit bushes. But yes, as Paulh says, use it freely on paths.

I’ve never used wood to surround beds as the expense and work involved would put me off. I have some woodchip paths. They do tend to get a bit lost in the height of summer and weeds seed into them, but I reclaim them in autumn when things calm down a little, and put some more fresh woodchip on. It probably depends a little on how tidy you like to be as to whether it’s worth the effort and expense of replacing all your wood. If you have a source of free wood, that could swing it!

[Tee Gee]

My way https://www.thegardenersalmanac.co.uk/Content/M/Mare%27s%20Tail/Mare%27s%20Tail.htm     

[Harry]

My way https://www.thegardenersalmanac.co.uk/Content/M/Mare%27s%20Tail/Mare%27s%20Tail.htm     

Cheers.
This will be the second year of my war with marestail, where I previously plucked the top growth off before it could reach 3 inches or so.

I was specifically asking if 'the collective' thought it will be worth my while lifting my carpet tile paths to try to thin out or eliminate marestail roots just under the surface..... Or will those roots die out if I can keep plucking the topgrowth. I know I'll only be getting the top few inches of a very long root system. No intention of digging deep to vainly try to eliminate the stuff.

I suppose I'm also asking whether free tree chippings are really worth blagging. I LOVE free, but not if it will take me decades to use the stuff. :)

[JanG]

I suppose I'm also asking whether free tree chippings are really worth blagging. I LOVE free, but not if it will take me decades to use the stuff. :)
[/quote]

Any wood chip will be compost within a year or two so, to my mind, it’s always worth giving as much space as you can to storing woodchip. It’s difficult to see why you think it would take decades to use it. In my set-up it disappears only too quickly.

[Tiny Clanger]

Hi, Carpet is banned at our site so we use slabs. Keep eye open for drives being replaced and the contents of skips. You'll be surprised what you can get.  Digging out is the only real way to get rid of pernicious weeds like mare's tail and bindweed.  We have some creeping over from a vacant plot next door.  We've sunk slabs down the edge of the plot edge deep which slows the stuff down a lot.  Hard work but worth it.  Hope you have a really great season.xx

[Harry]

Hi, Carpet is banned at our site so we use slabs. Keep eye open for drives being replaced and the contents of skips. You'll be surprised what you can get.  Digging out is the only real way to get rid of pernicious weeds like mare's tail and bindweed.  We have some creeping over from a vacant plot next door.  We've sunk slabs down the edge of the plot edge deep which slows the stuff down a lot.  Hard work but worth it.  Hope you have a really great season.xx

Hi, Bringing carpet onto our site is also banned, but there's masses of carpet tiles already in use and tolerated.
I like the idea of slabs on edge, albeit a big job.

I think I will lift the carpet tiles and weed below them to a fork deep, then re-lay them.
As to wood chippings, I'll blag a few bulk-bags and find a use for them later.

[Palustris]

We followed a mare's tail root down through sandy sub soil for a distance of over 3 metres and never did reach the bottom of it, so be warned. We also saw a root going down the side of a quarry for over 30 feet. Not the easiest thing to dig out.
Sorry, but eternal vigilance and a good hoe are the best things.

[Harry]

We followed a mare's tail root down through sandy sub soil for a distance of over 3 metres and never did reach the bottom of it, so be warned. We also saw a root going down the side of a quarry for over 30 feet. Not the easiest thing to dig out.
Sorry, but eternal vigilance and a good hoe are the best things.

Indeedy. It is futile expecting to eliminate marestail by digging deep. There is a tuber at the base of the deepest root and if one 'branch' comes up in your plot and you nip that off, there will be another branch somewhere else that's photosynthesising and keeping the roots alive.
Copious application of glpyhosphate or ammonium sulphamate MIGHT destroy enough root system, but at what cost?

Palustris, when you hoe it, do you pick up the chopped tops? Any point doing so?

Personally, I just aspire to have none of it prospering above ground and if I can pluck out 3 inches of root, I'm satisfied.
There is a certain pleasure when I spot a little cluster of shoots and plucking them out pulls a common root a few inches deep.

We grow our veg in the top foot or so. That's where our attention is best spent. It's also where many of our marestail roots end if it was born of a chopped root.

Remember that indestructible as it is, marestail does little harm to how much we harvest. It's not a greedy or competitive weed and casts little shadow.

[Palustris]

I just used to hoe the new stems off as and when I saw them, that is every day as I went out to go to work. Took about 5 years but in the end it did go away. Don't ever let them spore though.

[Vinlander]

We all have creeping perennial weeds that will use any cover to slip unnoticed into other beds.

I've tried digging them right out - fine:  but it is a very temporary solution if the source isn't in your plot.

I'm not sure it will help with horsetail/marestail but for Couches and Bindweeds I've developed one very workable solution from something I did for entirely different reasons - the lower end of my plot becomes a pond every winter, but the only spare soil I had was the stuff I was ruining by trampling on it - so I dug down to the subsoil and raised my beds with the contents of the old path - and filled the trenches with woodchip.

It's constantly rotting down and needs topping up monthly and full replacement every 2 years - but the result 'pays' for the effort because as soon as it's chocolate-coloured it can be used as a mulch (a really good soil conditioner).

Anyway, the bonus is the theme of this post - annual weeds don't find much comfort in it - a child with a table fork could clean them out entirely in an hour - OTOH the creeping weeds love it - and that is their downfall - they can be forked out (me & a real fork) with virtually no effort - and if you've already cleaned out your beds they will only be coming from one direction...

This year the only remaining problem is that we are not allowed to dig over the paths between plots - despite them constantly leaking couch into both sides. Lots of people bank up the soil away from the path so the couch can't go straight across, but it still comes through, just deeper.

So I've started digging out a full spit-wide trench (half as wide as a proper path) and filling that with woodchip, as a 'sacrificial' path, and using all the same techniques to remove weeds before they get to my beds.

It's working well.    (It definitely lures the weeds away from going deeper too).

Digging out the main paths would have been a nightmare anyway - they contain the claggiest & densest soil known to man - it's basically a composite material - a living version of GRP.

Cheers.

PS. For the really low lying beds the paths are layered - 50% prunings and 50% woodchip - because 100% woodchip can become wooden quicksand. Also recommended for the busiest paths unless they are more than half a metre above high water level.

[Harry]

I just used to hoe the new stems off as and when I saw them, that is every day as I went out to go to work. Took about 5 years but in the end it did go away. Don't ever let them spore though.

There seem to be different types of shoots: Spore headed females and ordinary shoots. I struggle to differentiate, so I try to remove all before they reach 3 inches. I plunge a 4 inch knife in the ground next to them and try to tease out some root. If they spore, they spore. It's not like I can stop them sporing on neighbouring plots.