Here's an heretical question:
Many of us are beset by mare's tail (equisetum arvense, if you're technical). It has filled my paddock like a luscious lawn and nothing - not even Tumbleweed - dents it. I mow it frequently like a lawn (and it's totally resistant to pests) And okay, I do know how to suppress it (just give me five years...)
But has anyone ever considered using it - for productive purposes?
Example: I am cropping it and drying it to use as a wondrous fill for tubs to store potatoes (instead of straw).
I friend begged me for some roots, to grow indoors as a decorative fern - and also to infuse as a hair rinse. (Being full of silica, it's medecinal properties are, I'm told, fabulous.)
Biodynamic gardeners spray that infusion on their soil - and compost heaps - as a foliar feed and compost starter.
And so it goes...
Meanwhile, anyone care to give me some further constructive ideas for using my paddockful of mare's tail? Apart from scrubbing pots with it?
Failing that, anyone like a few roots? (Posting it may breach some EC directive: in which case, wonderful!)
Yours, up to his knees in prehistoric fronds
JOHN YEOMAN
Any9one there love mare's tail?
I sympathise because I have it too and it is coming up through my tarmac drive but it can be killed. I have found SBK works. I snap the tops off and crush the stuff a bit so the weedkiller can work better and then spray selectively and carefully so as not to touch any other plants. Around here the roots have been found down mining shafts, I have to admire the plant for being so tough.
John
LOL Thank you for your generous offer but since I'm having a running battle with brambles and couch grass I will pass on this occasion. I do however know of a nursery who sold different species as a herb, some are apparently not as invasive.
I have found another use for mare's tail, since my last post.
When thoroughly dry, it makes a fabulous firestarter!
Throw away your oil-soaked copies of Jeffrey Archer paperbacks. This method's better for starting coal or log fires, at least in my open-fire grate...
John Yeoman
LOL John, I'd never admit to being a J Archer novel owner ;)
Heres some things I also found out today re horsetail:
Can be used as a yellow dye, the stems used for scouring metal and polishing pewter and fine wood work, (not recommended by me but...) can be made into a strength giving tea which enriches blood and hardens fingernails and was used as a poultice for wounds and skin ulcers. I don't have the recipes so I'm going to have a look.
Who'd have thought it ey?
Baa
Thank you! I'd never thought of using marestail as a yellow dye. A friend once told me, if I infused and used it as a hair rinse, it would turn my grey hair black again.
As my hair used to be brown, I declined her suggestion.
Meanwhile, I'm harvesting and drying armfuls of the wretched stuff, to store my carrots in now, and infuse into next year's organic tea (frozen meanwhile, of course).
Yours in tomorrow's foliar feed
JOHN
LOL John you could have the makings of a great fertilizer empire right there in your back garden!
Will have to try it on Bernards hair he used to have black hair but he has now got more grey than black, he worries that it makes him look old, i tell him he is old, no he does not look his age the women love to flash their eyelashes at him,which he enjoys very much but i know he has never strayed, cos its more than his life is worth, only joking hes had a good life with me and he is happy enough.
I guess.... there really is no answer to that!
Just don't put that marestail in his cornflakes. Or he'll soon be frisking down to the next paddock...
Haha! Having seen this welter of infor on what mares' tails can be used for, I'm thinking of concentrating on those little dears for next year. Seems the only thing they can't be used for is painless bikini wax strips.
I will cheerfully mail you some of my dried or fresh marestail for that experiment, provided you promise to provide me with the pictorial evidence that you are using it.