Green manure to control marestail?

[earlypea]

I also thought the pototoes and courgettes have an effect on weeds.  Thought having no marestail I have no experience of what effects they have on it. 

I don't know about the lime, but certainly different crops have different effects.

For me squashes tend to stamp it out the best, partly why I grew so many this year.  Then brassicas eventually as they get large, but if you leave them to flower and seed it pops right up again.

Alas, although potatoes are supposed to be a cleaning crop they are my worst nightmare.  I think marestail loves crumbly, earthy up type soil with heaps of dark organic matter.  It was imported to fix loose soil on railway sidings so it makes sense.  Then peas; the dwarfs do a good job, but tall, spaced out ones make it go crazy.  I think wherever you incorporate nitrogen it thrives.  It doesn't grow well in my leaner parsnip and carrot beds at all.

It also adores dark manure/compost mulches, is much, much slower through pale straw, hay type ones.

I really don't think hoeing helps one bit.

[earlypea]

[goodlife]

Hmm....isn't marestail prehistoric plant...from the time of dinosaurs..so it has survived all the things that nature and man kind can throw at it... ::)...I do wonder if there really would be a plant that would be able to over take/control this natural survivor...err...maybe Japanese knowweed...that would definitely smother it.. ::)

[earlypea]

I'm absolutely organic, but I must admit I have been tempted by this stuff - they say you can plant several days later.  Some parts of my plot are fine, but others suck my time like nothing on earth because of it.

http://www.progreen.co.uk/index.php?c=55&p=156

Trouble is you'd need to buy a space suit to go with....and it looks highly dangerous.

[goodlife]

I don't use sprays myself..but if the situation would demand...I would not feel happy to eat anything that has been growing on sprayed ground for a while..
I would result growing few lots of ornamental stuff..flower...and maybe some greenmanures too until planting any edible crops...I don't know if it would make anydifference..but it would feel right.. ::)

[Robert_Brenchley]

Doesn't liming get rid of marestail?  It simply does not grow on chalk or limestone. 

I remember as a youngster studying the geology of the south east and where the chalk of the north downs gives way to the upper green sandstone that it was marked by the occurance of marestail.  I remember the geography teacher pointing it out.

That could be because water percolates so easily through chalk. It grew happily on the site in Oxford where my father had a plot, and soils round there are pretty limy.

[twave]

Weed killer doesn't work on mares tail. My father in law even tried mixing it with wallpaper paste and pasting it on to concentrate the dose but it still survived. You just have to persist with digging it up.

Don't hoe or rotovate ground with mares tail as you just spread it. Every bit of the plant root and top growth that breaks off can grow into a new plant.

Not long after moving into our house mares tail sprang up every where - I could have cried  :'( - that was 5 years ago and after countless hours digging the stuff up it is gradually getting better.

Liming helps a bit as mares tail likes acidic soil but not all your crops are going to do well if you apply loads of lime. The only area we do this is on our gravel paths.

Good luck and you have my sympathy ;D