You've just got to admire and respect horsetail, its rhizomes branch all over the place and when you chop off one head it comes back at you with five, evil stuff, the hydra only grew back two heads when one was chopped off. #Allotment 🌱 - ThreadSky

tonyjw.bsky.social • 11 days ago

You've just got to admire and respect horsetail, its rhizomes branch all over the place and when you chop off one head it comes back at you with five, evil stuff, the hydra only grew back two heads when one was chopped off.
#Allotment 🌱

Comments

traceytaylor.bsky.social•11 days ago

I loathe it with a fiery passion! Every time we dig one up, seems like we end up spreading it. We even tried burning it with one of those mini flamethrower things (not during fire season,obvs). The horsetail was like “thanks so much for the fertilizer” & came back w/ even more than its usual vigour😒

emgeekay.bsky.social•11 days ago

And it grows everywhere, even in the Arctic!

mr4sheds.bsky.social•11 days ago

My plot is full of it. As part of the plot is actually a quagmire I have covered the area which after some time is supposed to kill it. Trouble is its years.

tonyjw.bsky.social•11 days ago

On our first plot we're now in the fifth year since starting to try to eradicate it, so we should be getting there....
Those bits were from part of the second plot that hadn't been touched.

mr4sheds.bsky.social•11 days ago

Can you really get rid of it. The dinosaurs were chomping on it and they died out.

tonyjw.bsky.social•11 days ago

It's difficult, but it can't live on stored carbohydrate for ever (or maybe it can 😂)

gardennicola.bsky.social•11 days ago

After 20 years this has invaded my garden courtesy of a neighbour. Impossible to eradicate, spend hours pulling it out!

tonyjw.bsky.social•11 days ago

It must be impossible in a garden with perennials, trees and shrubs, on an allotment at least you can dig anywhere and not care how it looks afterwards.

gardennicola.bsky.social•11 days ago

Yep pretty much!

nitaluvz.bsky.social•11 days ago

The first year in our new home I was horrified to find it coming up everywhere, the next two or three years it made me so angry, I was determined to get rid of it. After that I just accepted it. It grows in all my neighbours’ gardens & the field behind us, it’ll long outlive us all.

tonyjw.bsky.social•11 days ago

We had to try and dig it out initially because the allotment site had been rotovated, chopping up the rhizomes and making it multiply. Thankfully our soil isn't very deep, so we only had to dig down 70cm, in deeper soils it can go down 2 m!

nitaluvz.bsky.social•11 days ago

I hope it all helps. Here where I live they say the roots go all the way down into the mining tunnels. 😄 The only areas I managed to suppress it were laid to lawn.

emmbean.bsky.social•11 days ago

It’s evil but manageable with effort I think. Would much rather not have it! After a few years of battle I feel mine is starting to be less effort 🤞

gardennicola.bsky.social•11 days ago

Do please tell me how!

emmbean.bsky.social•11 days ago

Literally just pulling it out every time I see it. I don’t think I’ll ever get rid of it but I think if it never gets enough chance to photosynthesise it should get weaker. That’s my thinking anyway and last year it seemed less than in previous years

gardennicola.bsky.social•11 days ago

Thank you that's what I'm hoping too!

tonyjw.bsky.social•11 days ago

We've been quite successful on our first plot by digging out before we started, but we were forced into it by circumstance, the site had been rotovated in July 2020, but we couldn't start cultivating until September and by that time it had multiplied to form barely-penetrable mats of rhizomes.

emmbean.bsky.social•11 days ago

Oh wow that sounds hard work!

tonyjw.bsky.social•11 days ago

Here's how it looked at the beginning, it was a new site but the preparation was poor with rotovation and then the delay before we could start, the green in the first picture is all regrown horsetail.

evilgaytwin.bsky.social•11 days ago

My allotment plot is full of horsetail and whilst it is a pain, I’ve kinda learnt to just live with it. Nothing is going to stop it, so why fight nature.

tonyjw.bsky.social•11 days ago

I'm actually making a bit of an effort to get rid, but it's clear why it's survived 200 million years and will still be there with the cockroaches at the end.

traceytaylor.bsky.social•11 days ago

💯💯💯

metta2u.bsky.social•10 days ago

Ground Elder!😱

michellec66.bsky.social•11 days ago

https://www.rhs.org.uk/weeds/horsetail

tonyjw.bsky.social•11 days ago

Yes, that looks like one of the untended plots on our site in late Summer.

handle.invalid•11 days ago

Has anyone tried esting it?

tonyjw.bsky.social•10 days ago

The leaves are thin, rough and fibrous and have been used for scouring and polishing, they contain some weird compounds and may have been used to brew potions, but they aren't eaten.

handle.invalid•10 days ago

Equisetum?

tonyjw.bsky.social•10 days ago

Yes, that's the one, specifically E. arvense.

handle.invalid•10 days ago

https://youtu.be/4VA6zgELVeg?feature=shared

tonyjw.bsky.social•10 days ago

I could definitely harvest enough of those spore heads from other plots on our site!