By Stewart64
Got a mare's tail problem at my new house. Had all the weeds in the book and tbh stuff like nettles, brambles, ground elder and dandelions are a piece of cake compared to this. It literally regenerates itself within days however deep and carefully you extract the root system.
It's surrounded by good flowers and I don't really want to use weedkiller. will I get there eventually by just persisting with weeding, hoeing etc. until the root is finally starved.....up to seven feet of root apparently.
21 Jul, 2016
Answers
Cheerful? On the upside it's great physical training trying to remove it.
21 Jul, 2016
Is halosulfuron available in the UK? That's marketed as nutsedge and mare's tail control in Arizona. I can't speak about its effectiveness, since one of the benefits of gardening in the desert is a lack of mare's tail. Nutsedge and bermudagrass, on the other hand...! :}
21 Jul, 2016
If it is on land rather than in water it is horse tails rather than mares tails. Still a pain to try and clear.
21 Jul, 2016
I found pulling them up day after day does eventually reduce them till I now have very few appear, but they never give up entirely.
21 Jul, 2016
Sorr, just a comment, not a solution.
I've been pulling the damn things up for the last month. Sometimes they break off at ground level and sometimes I pull up a length of root up to 10 inches long.
They started in one of my raised beds and now they're all over the place.
21 Jul, 2016
Yup that is the only way Hank... good exercise!
21 Jul, 2016
A good reason for choosing a different house really but its a bit late for that (sorry...)
23 Jul, 2016
I'm afraid that it will never give up. I think the right weed killer might be your only option. I hope that one of the GoY experts will be able to say something more cheerful.
21 Jul, 2016