Mare's tail - help!!

My drive is the same nanym. Even the really tough weedkillers dont seem to touch it and the damn stuff grows through concrete!
The only thing I've had some sucess with is boiling water, backwards and forwards with the kettle for a while. It doesn't destroy it (comes back the following year) but it certainly takes the wind out of its sails for a month or so

I suggest you visit the Roundup website. Standard Roundup is not strong enough, you will need Roundup Stump killer which is a much stronger solution.

I've tried that tjspompa, my marestail laughs at Roundup Stump Killer! Also tried something with just initials, AJK or similar. For stumps, heavy brambles, came with dire warning not to let it get into the water system, never use more than twice a year. I crushed the marestail to increase take-up, applied weekly for 4 weeks. Didn't touch it.

Dynamite ????

The RHS Hyde Hall garden had serious Mares Tail infestation in the Queen Mothers garden. It now seems to be free of it, you could email them for advice.

That's a great idea, thanks, I'll certainly contact them. If they recommend an effective product tjspompa, I'll send some for you to keep in your virtual shed

Many thanks for all the advice. Will try the boiling water today and see what happens. A friend who had it in her flower beds was told to dig over the beds, put old carpet down to smother the weeds and then she should be free of it.....not a bit of it - the wretched stuff came up through the carpet stronger than ever!

I put tarpaulin (the really thick stuff) down for 6 months .. seemed to work.. but looked a blooming mess for a while.. not sure you could do this on a drive though!

Try salt. Pretend you are de-icing your drive. Leave it for as long as possible — until it is rained off.

I checked out the RHS Hyde Hall website tjspompa, for contact details to email them. It seems that to email for advice, you need to be an RHS member, which I'm not. Never mind, it was worth a try and there are a few more suggestions here now to try

I have cleared my patio of moss and lichen by sprinkling soda crystals on, leaving, then scraping with hoe. Worth a try, very cheap and available from any supermarket.

Next time we visit Hyde Hall, I will ask one of the gardeners (we visit every couple of weeks)

That's very kind of you tjspompa, many thanks

The advice I got from a gardener was to make up a concentrated solution of a glyphosate weedkiller and mix it with wallpaper paste. Crush the foliage and paint the paste onto it so that it gets absorbed to the roots. Look at the weather forecast first so that it won't get washed off. In the days when I could still bend with impunity it seemed to work, but now the stuff is back and getting its revenge.

PS I believe you can buy a garden flamethrower. This might be a temporary expedient, but if you burnt off the mare's tail, the garden would at least look respectable, though your fence and shed might attract the attention of the local fire service...

Just to say I tried the boiling water and and am so impressed with the results - the wretched stuff looks as though it's suffering!! Mind you I got some very strange looks off passers by when they saw me diligently emptying the contents of a kettle over my weedy tarmac. However, one benefit is that I'm now on chatting terms with several near neighbours

Good news nannym! Plus, no chemicals, so lots of green Brownie points

Grandad paints neat stump killer on to mares tail! It works on our side of the fence, unfortunately the neighbours aren't bothering on their side!

Hi we used to have this problem on our allotment........... we thought oh no prob it will be all mashed up when we rotavate and dissapear!! wrong made it a 100 times worse as we had chopped up the bits hence more took root!!! we did put down SOIUMCLORIDE ( they have banned it as pretty dangerous stuff and you cannot grow anything on the land for at least 6/12 months)................we ended up just trying to pick th whole lot up and made sure we got the roots....

I had it in a rockery. It goes down so far that digging it out is not possible (apparently gravediggers find roots 6 ft down...) If you break off the black (wet-earth-coloured!!!) roots each one can root again. It likes damp places, but is not averse to any soil.

In the end I poured a driveway weedkiller over the whole rockery twice a year for about 5-6 years and left it bare. Then I eased off gardening because I had breast cancer and it filled up with weeds, buddleia seedlings - and marestail.

I got someone to strip out all the rocks, dig out the soil and replace the rocks and new topsoil. I replanted this spring and all was well until a few weeks ago, when the marestail started to peep up again. I have sprayed roundup into a plastic bag and tied it onto the stem, binding it all the way up, then bruised the stems with a stone. The concentrated sun through the plastic has wilted the marestail and it looks dead, but I am on the lookout for more shoots.

If you are alert in spring, you can sometimes catch out a fruiting stem, put up before any leaf stems appear. It is slim, about 6 ins high, has the characteristic joints, but is pale brown, not green, and the head is a brown and black oval - earth-coloured again and camouflaged. If you can get rid of this, at least you only have the established roots to deal with, not new plants.

When I took over the next allotment to mine it was absolutely covered in mares tail.What I did was to use concentrated roundup at half the recommended dilution which of course didn't kill it b ut weakened it slightly.I then repeated the operation 4 times at 4 week intervals and it gradually gave up the ghost having had 2 1/2 times the recommended dose.The following year 95% had gone and I was able to keep on top of it what little there is now is very thin and weak and no problem Sorry to take so long to reply but I have not long joined Gransnet

sorry I meant to say every seven days for the next 4 weeks,I should also have advised using a teaspoon of sugar soap to a litre of the mixture (as a wetting agent)It also crossed my mind at the time to try 3/4 strength over 3 occasions I feel this may have been better.You need to keep the foliage above the ground so that it can absorb the roundup, too strong a dose will kill off the top - not what we want