Home › Forums › Open Discussion › Horsetail
- This topic is empty.
-
AuthorPosts
-
March 23, 2014 at 2:56 am #610807
Talaki34ParticipantHas anyone been able to get rid of it permanently?
March 23, 2014 at 3:23 pm #806012
redblackParticipantno. scott conner from AM1090 once quipped, “well, it’s kind of pretty…” when a caller asked that very question. the stuff is persistent, to put it politely.
but i have managed it by cutting it about 2 inches above the ground.
good luck.
March 23, 2014 at 5:13 pm #806013
Talaki34ParticipantThank you! I fear I am going to need lots of luck. It has reached the edge of a very large rain garden.
March 23, 2014 at 6:14 pm #806014
anonymeParticipantSheet mulching and smulching only make it worse, so don’t try that. The only way to control it is to carefully dig out the babies, and keep the rest of it cut to the ground. Eventually (at least theoretically) it runs out of energy. In my experience, control is the most you can hope for; eradication is near impossible.
March 23, 2014 at 6:27 pm #806015
dobroParticipantI just pull them out constantly every time I’m out in the garden. After a couple of years of doing so, they have diminished considerably, but I don’t expect they’ll ever be eradicated.
March 23, 2014 at 9:31 pm #806016
Talaki34ParticipantI am surprised by how many garden design books actually encourage the use of this plant. At BN today I found a Good Weed/Bad Weed book and it is listed as a good weed. Yikes.
March 23, 2014 at 9:45 pm #806017
JeannieParticipantIt comes across way cooler in the Wikipedia entry:
“Equisetum (/ˌɛkwɨˈsiːtəm/; horsetail, snake grass, puzzlegrass) is the only living genus in Equisetaceae, a family of vascular plants that reproduce by spores rather than seeds.
Equisetum is a “living fossil” as it is the only living genus of the entire class Equisetopsida, which for over one hundred million years was much more diverse and dominated the understory of late Paleozoic forests.
March 23, 2014 at 10:50 pm #806018
anonymeParticipantEquisetum hyemale is not very invasive, in my experience. It looks great in water features, and grows well in containers. It’s the one with just stalks, no “frills” – very architectural. I worked in a landscape where it was planted along a stream, and it never seemed to wander – unlike the other kind.
April 6, 2014 at 8:23 pm #806019
redblackParticipantnew observation: the horsetail on my property is on a weedy hillside from which i’ve been removing blackberry, morning glory, and english ivy and replacing them with native ground covers and shrubs for the last five years or so.
last year, rushes started volunteering themselves in vacant areas of my “garden.” at least, i think they’re rushes, but so far i haven’t noticed any flowers. there are thousands of grass plants, so ID might take me a while.
these grasses and their roots are so dense that the horsetail won’t grow there. as a matter of fact, horsetail seems to avoid lawns, too…
i hope that’s some useful intel.
April 6, 2014 at 9:06 pm #806020
waterworldParticipantSwanson’s Nursery has a helpful guide to dealing with horsetail that outlines many things that not only will not work, but are likely to invigorate horsetail. Here’s a link:
April 7, 2014 at 9:49 am #806021
Alki WarriorParticipantSounds like a real problem..
April 7, 2014 at 2:52 pm #806022
KatherineLParticipantProbably not helpful to you, but I used to live in a place where horsetail grew in a boggy area. I used them to scrub the cat dishes.
April 7, 2014 at 4:54 pm #806023
JTBParticipantOne of the horticulture experts on KUOW once said the most reliable way to rid yourself of horsetail is to move.
April 7, 2014 at 11:10 pm #806024
redblackParticipantalki warrior: yeah, weeds invade various fora in our lives. differentiating among useless and useful growth is a crucial first step.
if you care about what you own, that is…
April 8, 2014 at 12:24 am #806025
JeraldParticipantFriends reportedly got rid of a large patch by injecting Round-Up into each one with a hypodermic needle.
-
AuthorPosts
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.