Hi

i have a strange plant over growing my garden i try to use all sorts of weed killers to kill it but for some reason it just keeps growing back. the plant has a stem that looks like a branch of a pine tree, a long green stem with pine tree type leaves if you could call them that. any ideas on how to get on top of them.

Thanks.

The plant you are talking about sounds like mare's tail. It is a plant that creeps and spreds by its roots underground. It is very hard to kill but if you have a large area of it then you can put black plastic sheeting down to supress light and moisture and that will kill it over time. It may take a year or two to get rid of that way. You can use herbicides but they are not always a good option as the weedkillers that are sold to the public are not as good as the proffessional weedkillers.

You have a few options.

1.) Cover the area with black plastic and starve it from light and water. Make sure you dig a trench around the affected area and bury the plastic bellow ground so it cannot find a place to spread under the plastic and keep on growing.

2.) Try weedkillers. My advice would be glyphosate because it is a systemic weedkiller. (It goes throught the plant and kills it to the base of the root and it should not grow again.) This may take 2 or 3 applications.

3.) Or Just keep cutting it back to ground level. This I would not suggest.

The plant you where describing is as old as the dinosaurs if not older. So it has lasted this long and I dont think you will get rid of it in a hurry.

I think sometimes weed killers would not really effective to some weeds or some strange plants... when I am seeing some strange plants in my garden im just pulling it and burn it... I just can't help to put some weed killer so, for some easier thing is, then just pulling it...


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Plant Containers

A lot of organic vegetable gardeners do not like using weed killers so they normally cover the groung to stop the light getting to the plants which stops them from growing and kills them. This is good if you have a large area to kill. Another good tip is to mulh around your plants with home made compost or bark chippings.