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Marestail & Bindweed under my plot's paths

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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:

--- Quote from: Palustris on December 29, 2023, 15:10:59 ---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.

--- End quote ---
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.

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