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@Badgardener@mastodonapp.uk I used to have mare’s tail all over my plot. I used to dig it and pull the stuff out every year.
I went no dig and kept hand pulling mare’s tail out but I saw less and less of it. Now it rarely comes up anywhere on my plot. I wish I made a record of my observations but one year mare’s tail just wasn’t a problem.
Nature finds a balance.
@rootsandcalluses @Pollinators
@Broadfork @Badgardener @rootsandcalluses. I’m looking at pictures of marestail. It doesn’t look like one our rouges.
@Pollinators Mare’s tail/horses tail would have been recognisable to the dinosaurs.
It’s a really good silica plant. A dynamic accumulator with ridiculously long roots. Useful in a water extract.
https://www.rhs.org.uk/weeds/horsetail
@Badgardener@mastodonapp.uk @rootsandcalluses
@Broadfork Oh, mare's tail is the same as my "beloved" horsetail. I have that lovely stuff in my gardens, as well. In spring, it was taking over everywhere. The more I planted the beds with crops, the more I mulched the soil, the less of it there was. For a few weeks, I'd pluck them whenever I saw them but I got less vigorous about it as time passed. I learned that horsetail does not like good, happy soil. Nature applies it to compacted soils that need the strong rhizomes to loosen it. Cool.
@rootsandcalluses Yes it’s the same stuff. Back in the day when I used to dig and dig because I knew no other way of gardening the mare’s tail was a thug.
It was everywhere but turns out no dig, weeding and using mulch, mulch and more mulch has virtually got rid of the lot.
This little bit came up in my greenhouse from the compacted soil the other side but look at those dreads! 
All that healthy soil hugging the roots.
#SoilHealth #NoDig #Gardening
@Broadfork @rootsandcalluses When I first encountered this stuff, I dug it *all* out of the affected plot. It spread by runners up to a meter below the soil, threading through pure pink clay. I came to think of it as a vegetable version of the xenomorph from Alien. Like others in the thread, I've taken to just caring for the soil and plucking it out on the surface.