Kitchen Garden Forum

Yes madasafish I'd like to know too!

Hate is a word that is not in my vocabulary but the weed I dislike the most is Perennial Sow Thistle. This can give up to two builders barrows full of root to the square yard and choke the life out of most vegetables.
As for Maretails, well there is a way of getting rid of it and it used to be recorded on this forum but every time they change the forum they seem to forget to keep some things.
I got rid of Marestail using Parquat, which is no longer on the market, but suspect that Glyphosate would work similarly.
Should anybody be interested I will look it out and post it again.
JB.

Unfortunately glyphosate has little effect on equisetum arvense.
Certainly without bruising it is not well absorbed - little leaf area to be absorbed through and silicones to cause the glyphosate to run off.

The switch to glyphosate for weed control on railway tracks, for example, has resulted in a great increase in horsetails.

There are herbicides that kill it (eg Imazapyr), but not at the garden centre.

Hi Tony,
You are very correct about the bruising. The best way to bruise the plant is to rub it between your hands starting at the bottom of the plant working upwards. When I used Paraquat I used the rubber gloves and woolen gloves method and hand applied after doing the bruising. If you do the same with the killer, work it into the plant by hand and success will be yours. Spraying, even when the plant is bruised, sometimes fails.
Make your solution up put on first a pair of good quality rubber gloves and then a pair of woolen gloves then very lightly put your clad palms on the surface of the weed killer then squeeze off the absolute surplus so that you get no drips then, starting at the bottom of the plant, massage the weed killer into the bruised plant. I that doesn't work I'm a Dutchman!
Van JB.

Johnboy wrote:When I used Paraquat I used the rubber gloves and woolen gloves method

Ah yes, the Gloves of Doom. This really is very effective, and precise. Anyone who has weeds coming up amongst plants they want to preserve should use this method, so that they don't get any chemical where it's not wanted.

The predominant weeds on my allotment are bindweed and creeping buttercup. The former is diminishing rapidly with a combination of digging out and glyphosate. i think the creeping thistle is largely removed (it was a problem last year but I have just a few this year, so it is worth digging them out as they appear).
Regretably the bindwed roots also reside in the surrounding grass pathways.

Regarding specific application, I have started to use an old fizzy drinks bottle, covering the plant and spraying inside the bottle. I usually leave the bottle in place for a while afterwards for the inside to drain off. It is a lot quicker and less messy than gloves.

Hi Stephen,
I think that you have actually missed the point with regards to the use of gloves. By using gloves you actually work the weedkiller into the target weed whereas spraying is still by comparison very hit and miss.
I am predominantly talking about getting rid of Marestail and feel that the bottle method would not suit this particular weed.
With the Bindweed in your path; if you allow that bindweed to grow long and up a stick and trail it a bit and you then use the glove method and when treated put in a polythene bag so as not to get weedkiller on the path itself. So the grass may get a little longer than usual but you will for sure get rid of the bind weed.
JB.

Hi Felix. What a brilliant method of dispatching individual weeds! I would never have thought of that one but I shall certainly try it.
Another "weed". a really pretty wildflower which is rife on our plot, is Scarlet Pimpernel (Anagallis arvensis). It's a lovely, delicate little thing but spreads like mad if you leave it to seed, so I enjoy the flowers, then pull it out.
We have had lots of different "weeds" since we had the floods two years ago, some I can tolerate, others, like the Goosefoot (red, I think) is all over the place and gets up-rooted on sight. Poppies have appeared too and I leave them to flower then remove them before they seed. Those floods have alot to answer for, (quite apart from the devastation it caused to alot of my fellow plot holders) regarding "new" species springing up all over the place! Cheers.

Sorry John.
I'm lucky, I don't have marestail.

I was, of course up at the allotment over the weekend realised that, if I hate anything, it is ivy. Gastly stuff, pulls out mortar, suffocates stuff underneath it. I am really glad that I got rid of the ivy on my plot, but it is rampant on adjacent areas. I am watchful and will keep it at bay.

Elaine,
I have poppies too not the red field poppies but some rogue cultivated ones that must have blown in from somewhere or have bred from a totally fifferent variety that I once had in my garden and may have been transported to the plot in compost etc. I leave them be as long as they aren't somewhere where they would cause a problem and wait to see what colour they are!!

Hi Glallotments. Yes same here regarding the poppies. They are those mauvy-purpley ones with very pale stems and leaves..opium poppies? I do like them but my husband hates them and pulls them up as soon as they have the cheek to poke their heads up through the soil!!
I have a lot of creeping buttercup which is a nuisance too - and thistles, a legacy of the plot behind us which used to be a thistle farm, prior to it being taken over and transformed by its present tenant! Bindweed seems to have taken off this year too - it is popping up all over the place. Cheers.

Elaine
I have purple ones with black centres and red ones with black centres and some are even double. Some are sort of pink pompoms that I once grew in the garden from a free packet of seed. All have greyish green leaves so are easy to spot even as really small seedlings so can be controlled.
Fortunately my husband likes them too!!

Another plotters at the opposite end of the site has exactly the same so we have been comparing the colours we get!!

Well they, (whoever they are) say that a weed is just a plant growing in the wrong place and I totally agree with the usual list of hated weeds such as mares tail, thistles, docks, ground elder, bind weed, couch grass etc..

I now can add one that is a commercially grownplant growing in the wrong place and that is oil seed rape, I've got loads of it growing amongst my potatoes, marrows and runner beans. A neighbouring field that had rape growing in it last year has now got field beans struggling to grow in a field of yellow peril.

Keep hoeing

Barney

Hi Barney,
Oilseed Rape makes good compost. Here we seem to get it growing although the nearest crop is always about a quarter of a mile away.
I just let it grow till it is about to head up and then compost it.
It is a nuisance but not in the same league as some of the other weeds that you have mentioned.
JB.

I don't like oilseed rape either and at times when I travel around that is all I can see miles and miles of acid green. Just not the same as buttercup yellow. Driving alongside fields with a car window down takes my breath away and when it is on flower is the only time that I have any sort of sign of hayfever.

The problem is how it seems to be encroaching on our hedgerows and motorway embankments. Just hope it doesn't adversely affect our bnative plants.

Its a pity about bindweed being such a thug as in the countryside it looks lovely.