marestail

rodney's picture

Its a nightmare of a tale!

I've been chasing marestail for a few years now, kind of got it under control

any advice?

marestail

I know exactly what you mean when you say you've been chasing marestail, it's kinda like chasing your own tail lol, I pull it up, a couple of days later it's back, We made the mistake of having half of our allotment rotavated when we very first got our plot, I didn't even know what marestail was, Oh those were the days, well between my naivety and the then site secretarys stupidity, {he really shouldn't have advised me to rotavate knowing full well the weed problem} anyway since then there has been a one woman war raging on our site and believe me the marestail is winning lol,
I didn't want to use any chemicals on my plot so I've been pulling it by hand and in about 3 years I may be closer to getting rid of it, I've been told to cover it for a year but I don't want to waste anymore ground although I am debating on whether or not to cover it over winter.

marestail

Four years ago when I took over my plot I dug a trunch to sit in and carefully went through the soil removing all traces of mairstail (or so I thought). After a few months I had covered only about 10 m2 approx two feet deep I hit clay and the roots went down into that, but had chanced from brown to yellow!
As a result I had some lovelly fine soil to grow carrots in, which I so did, before long a fresh batch of mt reappeared swamping my baby carrots.

Plan 2.
Covered large areas of ground with thick black plastic for 18 months, everything
appeared to be dead appart from the brown mt roots, which was still green in the center.

Plan 3
Treat with weed killer and leave for for 6 months! ( yes I know, but I had a forest of the stuff, and the more I was digging it out the worse it was getting).
I had one full season mt free, and thought I'd won the war.
This year I have been finding the stuff popping up here and there, and been carefully taking it out, around any produce that I wish not to disturb, cut the bottom out of plastic bottle place over the offending mt and treat down the neck of the bottle scew top back on.
I have mostly this year been carrying on with plan 3, and its nearly all gone, for the time being, but at the momment I'm only growing on small patches of ground.

Changing the subject what is all this lol business (its a new one on me)?

Happy weeding,
Rodney.

marestail

I've only had my plot since march and I've been pulling it up everyday lol, but I think after reading your tale lol I'm going to treat it with the dreaded weedkiller and cover it with something very thick lol, and hopefully that might see it off, if I cover it now until february that'll give it 6 months so fingers crossed.
Marestail is a funny weed, where I've used a suppressant and then a mulch it has hardly come through but in my plastic greenhouse I just used the black stuff and it come right through, in fact I thought one day there was a small animal hiding under the black stuff but it was where the marestail was pushing it up from underneath.
Oh by the way lol means laugh out loud, and when I read your comment on my blog you had me roflol... rolling on floor laughing out loud.

lol

Hi Rodney,

great advice - thanks. I'll probably be putting it all ionto action in the future.

lol stands for Laugh Out Loud