Help identifying weed and advice on killing please

Correctly called Horsetail, I believe, as Marestail is an aquatic weed, but you are much more likely to hear it referred to as Marestail in my experience

I pull mine up. I take a supermarket bag out with me, pick it straight into the bags - be careful not to drop any bits !. Pulling it whilst holding right at the bottom, which usually brings a little root with it. Mowing will leave enough "green" that it will regenerate more quickly.

The maxim I go by, which I read on another forum, is "Never let it see a Sunday".

Look out for ammonium sulphamate, as Pro said, but I'm pretty sure that "root out" has been discontinued (or is it "Deep root" - I forget!). There may be a compost accelerator still on sale with ammonium sulphamate which may work?

I don' have much faith in detergent additives for Glyphosate weedkillers - the chemical companies have spend a lot fo research and money on coming up with the best possible Surfactant chemical combination with the herbicide to get the stuff to stick, and I doubt they would have bothered if a squirt of Fairy Liquid did a better job. But I'm no chemist.

The Monsanto site says that crushing may work, but Round-up must then be applied immediately - presumable the wretched plant self-heals fast too :( and they also talk about injecting it - cut off the top, which I thing exposes a hollow tube, then inject the herbicide into the tube.

Glyphosate (most well known brand being Round-up) works by disabling the plant's chemical processes in the roots - so it has to be absorbed and trans-located down to the roots before it will work. That's why the waxy coat of the Marestails is such a barrier to Glyphosate working well.

 

hi all,

I thought i'd revive this thread and update but also add a new twist in this (horse) tale.

I have been using ammonium sulphamate to great effect, it kills it for a few months at a time, and tonight I've been out and spent around an hour on a 15 x 8 foot square of flags weeding it out then spraying ammonium sulphamate+drop of fairy liquid in between the flags after.

The thing I'm now worried about is that it's got into my lawn?!!!! I thought it didn't like grass, but it appears to have got quite far back into my lawn now.....have I had it?

 

It doesn't like grass ! Well that's a new one to me. In my experience it will grow in anything - straight up through the tarmac !
I'll say what I said before. The stuff can't be got rid of. 25 years of spraying and I still had it. But it can be kept under control. Sorry, but that's the best that can be hoped for.
There is no weedkiller that claims to kill it. The ones that did have been taken off the market.

 

It was the original "tree" before our flowering trees evolved. The coal measures are made out of it.