A long shot I know. I’ve got plenty of in my garden! Even growing through the new turf. Looks like this product claims to kill marestail.

Can I Paint the product onto marestail stems rather than spraying and therefore avoid killing by lawn? I know this would be slightly time consuming but I really don’t want to have to ditch my new-ish lawn.

Would be interested in knowing if it works, as our front garden is full of Horsetail. From searching around the only “ammonium sulphamate” seems guaranteed to kill it off, the trouble is it’s now banned under European law (a technicality apparently). Though this also sound like it will kill off everything else too… maybe not a great help for your situation. I’m worried about my our front garden hedge, so haven’t bought any “compost accelerator” to try (read the post’s under the article in that link).

EDIT: TBH I was under the impression that if you keep your lawn mown regularly, stuff like this will eventually die off in that area.

Kurtail info here

The videos on the progreen site above look pretty conclusive. Active ingredient is glufosinate-ammonium which sounds different to ammonium sulphamate 9although similar). don’t know about which is permitted or not.

I like the idea of regular mowing killing off the marestail. That would be a result, but I assume we are talking years and years.

I think you will struggle to eliminate horsetail with glufosinate_ammonium. It is a very good dessicant of green foliage but does not translocate very well in my experience. Painting it on could be your own Forth road bridge painting epic. Good luck

itstig – any other top tips for getting rid of it?

I once heard a theory that it doesn’t like alkaline soils, so it might be slowed down by applying lime. (It comes from a long line of swamp-dwellers.) I’d try slow release lime, oystershell grit or similar. But as the roots are said to go down ten feet, this may be a slow process.

I have had some success with the following method. Firstly you need to break down the waxy coating on the stems of the marestail – I trampled or crushed between thumb/ finger although large areas would probably be better with a roller. Next apply glyphosate weedkiller (I got mine off e-bay). As I didn’t want to kill the grass I applied with a brush. After a couple of treatments I killed off the top growth – I will have to wait & see whether it comes back.

our garden was full of it when we bought our flat. we did what mangoose did, trampled/crushed it and then nuked it with triple doses of glyphosate and other random chemicals people suggested. killed the top growth then we dug the whole garden out to around a foot deep removing ANY roots or bits of roots we found. we pulled out about 3 black bin liners of roots!!! 😯 sounds full on but it wasn’t too bad as at its not too big and at the same time we were taking out tree stumps/old shrubs/old air raid shelter wall etc and needed to get the levels down anyway as it was about a foot higher than the path/house floor level

we’ve since turfed it and got borders around it with new plants/veg’s and trees which are all doing fine. however the marestail is still coming back, bit by bit. luckily not in the lawn itself just in the borders – we just pull it out and dig the root up every time we find some. after speaking to plenty of gardeners/doing research its apparent it’ll never go away, and not helped by the fact next door neighbours garden is a jungle of marestail so without killing theirs off no doubt we’ll never get rid of the epicentre of the problem (theirs is a rented house – occupier and landlord have no interest in sorting it or even letting us take care of it!)

i’ve heard a good way of getting totally rid of it is to cover the affected area in black tarp to cut out sunlight for a year or so – obviously not great for kids/bbq’s. the main thing with it is any part of the root will grow into a full plant, and it survives composting too so important to dig it all out and burn/plastic bag and bin it

Horsetail is awful to control within a field crop(your lawn only bigger). The really effective herbicides are either totally distructive to weed and crop or totally banned. Having a strongly growing sward of grass to compete with horsetail will help a lot, cutting regularly will stop it flowering and producing spores. Digging can cut the roots up leading to fragments regrowing encouraging regrowth. Its a tough plant .Not much help at the moment. Our agronomist is coming on thurs so will bend his ear a bit on your behalf.

i’ve heard a good way of getting totally rid of it is to cover the affected area in black tarp to cut out sunlight for a year or so

Our front garden was black tarp with stones ontop.. the horse tail grew threw it after a couple of years…