Beat your weeds: Horsetail
 (Read 500+ times)
By Emma Cooper
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Field horsetail (Equisetum arvense, also sometimes known as Mare’s Tail) is a surviving member of one of the oldest plant families, one that has been around since the time of the dinosaurs. As you might imagine for a long-lived plant, it’s pretty tough, with creeping underground stems that can reach depths in excess of 2 meters.
In spring it produces brown shoots with small cones that produces spores, but this is only one method of reproduction and it’s also one of those annoying plants that can re-grow from tiny sections of root. This is one of those weeds that you want to avoid cutting up with a mechanical cultivator.
Because of the high silica content of the stems, horsetail has been used in times past for scrubbing pans and polishing metal. You can make a nutritious liquid feed from it if you drown it in water for a few weeks. It’s pretty stinky, but you could try adding some nicer smelling herbs (such as thyme or rosemary) to improve the odor. This liquid feed also has anti-fungal properties, so it’s useful as a foliar feed on ailing plants. Horsetail is also used in herbal medicine.
But if you have it in your garden then you probably want to get rid of it – and that can be a tough job. You’ll need to be persistent, and starve the plant of energy. You could try smothering it with vigorous plant growth, or mow it regularly. Or you can cover it with a light-excluding mulch, but you’ll have to leave that in place for several years to kill off the roots.
If you’re cutting back your horsetail and don’t want to waste it, then be very careful about adding it to the compost heap. Either drown it or leave it out in the sun to dry and make sure it’s dead before throwing it on the compost. Or you can compost pesky weeds like this in black plastic bags. Wet them down, throw them in the bag on their own and then seal them in. Eventually they’ll rot down into compost on their own, and you’ve made the best use of your weeds without any risk that they’ll spread.
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Author Bio Box: Emma Cooper
Emma Cooper is the author of Growing Vegetables is Fun. She also has a weekly gardening podcast, The Alternative Kitchen Garden, all about growing your own food in an environmentally friendly way. Check out her website for her gardening blog and more articles.
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