Horsetail

We have one area of our yard that was compacted during the landscaping process. Now it tends to pool moisture and horsetails are growing. HOW DO WE GET RID OF HORSETAIL, short of moving out of the neighborhood?

We covered area for 18 months; put in a French drain system; limed; brought in so-called 5-way soil to a depth of 10 inches. I have painted horsetail runners with concentrated Roundup to no avail. I am now trying to find 60 Rosmarinus officinalis 'Renzels' Irene to thoroughly cover the area quickly this summer. Any help in killing horsetail or in finding these plants in western Washington state would be appreciated. (You will be included in my will.)

Thanks,

NWDave

Dave, you have my sympathies. I have been battling horsetail in a 23'×23' area of our yard for three years now. That area just happens to be my veggie garden.

When listening to "Gardening With Ciscoe" on AM Radio, the subject of horsetail came up one day. He gave that Ciscoe chuckle and really didn't give the caller [or me] the answer they [we] were hoping for. To summarize, "be persistent and consistent in making efforts toward removing them; they will diminish over time." Oy.

This spring, a DG member said that mixing lime into the bed will help reduce their growth. As this is my veggie garden and I learned that a bit late, we have not tried that approach (perhaps in the fall after growing season has ended -- if I remember by then).

I am regularly pulling those horsetail, reaching down to get as much as the roots up as possible. This has helped some, but weeding diligence certainly is required. Though I have an aversion toward using chemicals, my husband has also applied RoundUp in the late fall (Oct/Nov) and early spring (Jan/Feb) in an effort to reduce both horsetail and clover from the area.

Oddly, the only horsetail-affected area in our yard is the garden; this spring we added an 8×12 shed into the garden space, so now I have less horsetail to fight. Hehe. I guess that's one way of getting rid of them, eh?

In my effort to learn ways to get rid of horsetail, here are some links I've found with advice on getting rid of horsetail:

http://www.ubcbotanicalgarden.org/forums/showthread.php?t=6795
Post: "Common horsetail, Equisetum arvense was the first vascular plant seen recovering after the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption and therein lies the answer.
Equisetum arvense is found in areas with soil with little or no nutritional content, for example, gravel pits. Simply raising the nutritional content of your soil by adding generous quantities of composted materials will, in time, get rid of your horsetail."

This seems like good advice. We have been raising the nutritional content of the soil over the past three years via addition of compost, manure, etc. (in addition to those RoundUp applications, frequent weeding, and multiple tillings in the fall and spring). Our horsetail problem has diminished, though there still are a lot of them fighting to come up.

And this one is also a good article on getting rid of horsetail:
http://www.hillgardens.com/horsetail.htm


Best wishes to you on this venture.
-Tif :-}



This message was edited May 20, 2006 7:47 AM

Oddly enough, the only place I have horsetail is coming up thru the floor of our greenhouse. And there are only a few. I actually like the looks of them in small (3 or 4) numbers. I just hope they never spread!

Gwen

Oh, my. I live in Greenbank, WA (just up the road apiece from Langley, Gwen) and am battling horsetail like I've never seen this year. From what I've read and heard, we shouldn't try to dig up the roots as it just stimulates them to grow more and there's no way to get them all. Supposedly we should just break them off at soil level as they apparently need sun to grow. I'm trying that, but am a bit dubious. I think I could spend every day just snapping off horsetail starts, only to have them reappear within a day or two.

Carole

Hi, Carole! Yes, I know where Greenbank is. LOL Have you been a member long? You're the first person from the island I've run into on here. I've been a member for about a year and a half.

Are you a member of the garden club up there? I've been trying to get to one of their meetings for probably two years now! I always either forget about them on the right date or I have something else I need to do.

I've managed to get to two meetings of the South Whidbey Garden Club, one last May and one this May.

We're having a Dave's Garden 'round up' here on June 24th to go on the Whidbey Island Garden Tour, so I think you're going to have to join us for that! There's info on it over in the roundup forum.

We're doing another PNW round up in July and going nursery hopping over in Snohomish.

Sorry to hear about your horsetail problem. I'll be sure and just cut mine off at the floor level instead of pulling them out by the roots. Last thing I want to do is start a horsetail problem here. I have enough troubles with the blackberries!

Gwen

I asked this to a friend who emailed me this response.
It's long -hope it helps
The Genus is Equisetum, and there are about 30 species world-wide. Around here we mostly have Equisetum arvense. As for killing it, I hate to sound discouraging but it is nearly impossible. That is why it has thrived relatively unchanged on our planet for the past 400 million years. Major climate changes, geologic calamities, pests, and modern herbicides don't seem to phase it.

There are a number of things that you can do, but none of which are a solution that you or your mom are likely to find acceptable.

1. It does not grow out in the shrub-steppe, only in riparian zones. You can deny it water. It generally only grows where there is a reliable source of water for at least part of the year (irrigation ditches, for example). Equisetum can go without water for a few years, and as soon as water returns it pops back up as refreshed as you or I might be after a good night's sleep. Like all things on our planet and perhaps the universe, water plays a part in its life cycle. The problem with water denial is that it takes a few years of withholding water to see any type of impact. Of course, nothing else will grow there either because the lack of water. A variation of this is to increase the soil level perhaps six feet above where one might find any dampness in the most extreme circumstance. For example put in a thick layer (perhaps a foot) of pea gravel to drain off all water. Then put five or six feet of clean top soil above that. But before you do this last step, you also need to do step #2.

2. You can Round-up the Heck out of it, but that brings its own problems. The plant is rhizomatous with rhizomes down as much as six feet deep. You must also kill all the rhizomes and it takes a lot of Round-up to kill 100% down six feet, We are not talking just getting the herbicide to the plant, I mean you have to get Round-up to every fiber of the plant via saturation. Again, with that much Round-up nothing else will grow there for perhaps ten years. But Equisetum does not reproduce by rhizomes alone: they reproduce via spores as well (not seeds). The spores are not effected by the Round-up because they basically are not alive while they are spores. Seeds are embryos which can be killed, but spores aren't much more than instructions on how to recreate the plant once conditions are again favorable (Equisetum will wait). So once the destruction caused by the Round-up starts to dissipate, guess what the first living organism to return will be? It will be that dormant spore that was unaffected by the Round-up. Equisetum will have returned and reestablished itself long before any other plant life could ever return to such an inhospitable environment. You could saturate the ground with Round-up as outlined in this section, then bring in new soil as outlined in item #1 above.

3. Your could aggressively dig it out, but you have to get 100% of all rhizomes and 100% of all spores (essentially impossible). In a few hundred years you could very well remove so many of the spores that the plant will be temporarily gone from that area.

4. You could remove all of the soil and replace it with soil not containing Equisetum. That would entail a project similar to environmental clean-ups on the scale of what they are doing at Hanford. Again, you have to get 100% of all rhizomes and spores.

5. You could wait until the planet's environment shifts sufficiently to render the plant extinct, but I caution you, it has already been 400 million years and the plant is still thriving.

6. Cap the area over with not less than one foot of concrete. Equisetum has been known to grow right through six inches of concrete or black-top

7. Here is perhaps the only viable alternative: Learn to live with Equisetum. Landscape around it an let it have is chunk of the environment. It will not spread beyond where it can get a good supply of water.

Happy gardening!

Good Gawd!!!! Beecharmers, nice reply. (chuckles)
I've learned to live with it, like the crows that come with the songbirds. Or you could put a pond in the middle of the patch of horsetail,, and tell everyone you like it that way...


Viv

LOL! I knew it would surely outlast me.

Gwen, sorry to be so slow on answering you - where the heck does the time go anyway?? And, of course, I knew you'd know where Greenbank was!!! LOL.

I just found this website last week and have really been enthused about it - it would be great fun to go to the Garden Tour! I'm still finding my way around on the website, but will find the roundup thingamajig.

I'm not a member of the Greenbank Garden Club, nor the South Whidbey Club, as I work part-time and for now just can't fit it in. When I retire - in a year or two I may join both. I know quite a few people in the Greenbank club and met a really friendly gal who works at the hardware store in Clinton who said the South Whidbey club is a hoot.

And, yes, of course there are the blackberries.

Beecharmers, you cracked me up with your horsetail advice - wish it wasn't true!! I actually don't mind the looks of it, but only in small doses. I have a huge problem around the drainage ditch at the back of my property (and the property in back of me, other side of the ditch, was more or less clear cut a couple years ago which seemed to add to the problem. And also added a ton of stinging nettles!!!!). Oh, well - I also have lots of flowers, thank goodness!!!

Viv, love your idea of a pond around the horsetail and saying it's exactly what we want!!!

Sure enjoying this group!!

Carole

My sister has had a problem with the horsetail for several years and has been using roundup onit without much success. So, one of the DGers out of Seattle said to use lime on it. She started that last year and she just told me yesterday that it is starting to shrivel up. One other good thing with the lime is that the horsetail was around her lilac and they like the lime.