Keeping field full of weeds out of my garden/lawn.

[kevins_news2]

I'm in southern Ontario Canada. I have an empty undeveloped area behind my yard. My grass just ends directly into this rough. It gets full of Field Horsetail as far as i can tell. These slowly creep into the grass and even pop up a few meters further inwards (dangerously close to my garden) from their underground roots. Is there any way to control this? I hope that their mere presence within the boundaries of my property doesn't mean i've already lost the battle.

Here's what google brings up.

site i find says that "repeated cultivation along with other control methods" may help. What exactly does that mean? just keep picking all the shoots that show up above ground? And what are the 'other methods'? Is there a spraybottle of something i can get to spary all the shoots instead of picking them?

Also, is there something i can do within the rough area to help. Maybe spreading some herbicide into the first meter of the rough area to tyr to create a small break between it and my lawn? Last year when i dug out my garden i placed all the sod that i removed along the back of my lawn into the field. I essentially plunked down about a meter of sod on top of all the weeds in the hope it would smother them. They just started growing through it.

Any thoughts appreciated.

[MC]

This is a tough weed to eradicate. You can attempt to control them in your own yard, but it's going to be a long battle as long as the weed grows in the field.

One solution might be to till along your property line and then sink a barrier strip. This might contain the roots from spreading.

[Frogleg]

There's a (long) recent/current thread on uk.rec.gardening about horsetail. You might check Google groups. I didn't read the thread because I don't have horsetail. :-)

[kevins_news2]

Thanks. A few threads there have been quite usefull

Kevin