Solved Weed or Not?

Had a back "garden" for a while but only grass, decided to try and help the bees and put a section in with wild flowers, ,killed a section of the grass, turned over, flattened, put weed suppressant down, then built long planters, filled with sterile soil, scattered seed, plants are coming on well, but getting these plants also which I believe are weeds, horsetail I thionk?, but not sure as whats really strange to me is they are growing at a right angle along the ground, should I pull them out or use some sort of weedkiller if they are?

As I say new to gardening except cutting grass etc so any help appreciated

 

I’m afraid it looks like marestail to me

 

If it is marestail. Then the wee suppresant is backfiring. Please don't ask why or how, but for perennial weeds as such. They need to go DOWN as well as UP

 

I thought as much,

cheers for the replies Loki, Mike

 

Just a update, there was around 14 of them amongst the plants and a couple more have come through, I killed them with resolva extra tough, but put it on them for 3 days running and it killed them, I have no doubt more will come through as I know it is a tough plant to beat, also I noticed the lady next door has lots of it :(

I dont know if it was a tip I read here? but to try and minimise any damage to plants around them, I cut up plumbing waste pipe, put a piece around each marestail and sprayed within the pipe area and it worked, no unwanted casualties so far

 

Hmm!
Equisetum arvense.. common name field horsetail.
Too early to be sure! It will be back.

Years ago on Gardeners Question time on Radio 4 one of the panel said the only way to get rid of it ....is to move!
We had it in our old garden...tried every method we could from digging it out..going really deep, to picking it every time it came up, to chemicals. It continued to grow happily.

If all else fails you can use it to clean your saucepans.
It is high in silica so is a good abrasive

 

Huge and often very deep root system, there could be someone else quite a distance from you in your neighbourhood who is struggling with the same plant! Only thing I have managed to do over the years is minimise it so that I now only get 5-6 shoots of it coming up at a time during growth season, I don't think eradication is possible for me. I simply regularly pull and break off all the stems when they are 5-7 inches tall, but it seems that cutting would be better than breaking off. I just read this American article which mentioned an interesting fact, apparently because the plant favours poor soil the addition of sufficient organic matter may eventually help you to drastically reduce it in your garden.

"As usual, most garden problems can be attributed to our soil. Horsetail grows in poor soil, so if you take the time to amend and increase organic matter it will help to eradicate this noxious weed."

The horrors of Horsetail

Nick

 

Ours was in a very fertile, rich, organic soil...on a plot that had previously been used to grow veg
In the end we planted raspberries on the plot so the horsetail didn't matter.