The Dreaded Mare's Tail

I'd never heard of mare's tail - or marestail, or horsetail, or Equisetum arvense to give it is proper name - before we took on our allotment. When we first viewed allotment 22, most of the weeds and grass had very recently been cut back by the council. Although the council have a policy to not get involved in the upkeep on allotments these days due to a lack of funds, apparently our plot was so bad that they made an exception.

When we viewed our plot, it was neglected and overgrown, but I didn't notice any mare's tail. When we returned two weeks later, it was full of those strange cone-like stems. We had no idea what they were, but a friendly fellow plot holder told us. After plenty of online research, we established mare's tail is almost impossible to remove, but that it is possible to weaken it dramatically.

This was taken before the mare's tail actually got too bad :-/

Most of the online resources I've used state that the fir tree-like mare's tail plants can reach "up to 2 feet in height". All I can say is, I wish ours was only 2 feet tall! In certain spots - usually in and around bushes and brambles - ours regularly reaches heights of 5-6 feet. Yep, it's as tall as we are. In fact, it's a lot taller than us in places but we haven't got round to tackling the more towering stems yet!

How to remove mare's tail

The one good thing about mare's tail is that it's easy to remove the shoots and fertile fir tree plants by snapping them off at the ground. We must have filled about 10 huge cement sacks (the kind you could fit a small car in) in just a couple of weeks by doing this, and there is still a lot more to go. I think we've been to the council tip more times in the last few weeks than we have in our entire lives. It's very satisfying to get rid of them, though, even though I know they'll return!

My mum and niece working on the mare's tail

Our hope is that once our plot is cultivated, we can try and stay on top of the mare's tail as much as possible, removing shoots as soon as they appear. Considering our plot has been neglected for so long, and due to the time of year we took it on, it's safe to say we shouldn't experience anything like the same level of problem with mare's tail again.

Although there is a fair bit of mare's tail on the rest of the site, it's nowhere near as bad as on our plot. Our neighbours have the odd stem sprouting up among their crops, but the majority of sites don't have any signs of it. 

Resources

If you're determined to eliminate mare's tail, horse tail, Equisetum arvense, call it what you will, this site has some great tips and case studies. We're sticking to the snapping-off-and-hopefully-weakening technique for now though!