Help required with reoccurring weeds or strange growth

There are strange weeds or growths that keep coming back . Tried all the weed killers going and ripping them out from the roots . However they always return . Any ideas ?

 

Its Horse tail, not something I have come across, but its a difficult one to eradicate.
Persistence with weedkillers is probably the best method, what ones have you tried.

 

I agree it's horsetail and the problem is that's it's very hard to eradicate. It's a persistent blighter that's been around since the dinosaurs and it's has very deep roots, a couple of meters down in some cases. I don't advise using chemicals in the garden so can't help there but manual removal can take years as you need to weaken the plant by continuously pulling up the new growth.

 

They had it at one of the RHS Gardens, might have been Hyde Hall. Some years ago they showed the head gardener on TV jumping and walking on it to crush it it before spraying with glyphosate. Weed killer just slides off it otherwise.

 

Bruising without breaking the stems I assume, washing up liquid helps as well.

 

We have it but thankfully nothing as bad as @Jimmy2024. Yes the roots go down far and digging is not always possible as it grows amongst other plants that we don't want to disturb. So all we can do is to keep pulling it up as soon as it is visible and hope that will help to curtail it.

 

Pore boiling water over them was recommended to me by professional gardener. Only problem is you keep having to run back and forwards to the house.

 

Unless you bruise the stems it is unlikely anything will work, they have an outside layer of silica, which makes them pretty impervious.

 

One characteristic of this plant allegedly is that it can concentrate gold particles to the extent of enabling gold to be recovered from the ashes when dried and burnt. This account was given to labourers to incentivise the enthusiastic pulling and burning. I have never had the opportunity to put this to a practical test; have any of you been so fortunate?
Science: Growing Gold

 

It sounds like utter nonsense to me @infradig , at least in most places. There'd need to be a gold in the soil to start with for that to have any chance of being true, so it could possibly work in those parts of the world where gold mining not too deep down is a thing.

 

You will have noticed that I did not recommend this process, merely mentioned the legend.
As the OP, like too many posters, does not give his location, it would be unreasonable to encourage him to investigate the possible truth.
However, for those of an enquiring mind, I refer you to this:
https://nora.nerc.ac.uk/id/eprint/11831/1/Gold_proof_11_7July2010.pdf
Commercial viability of gold extraction of ground ore is around concentrations of 3 grams per metric ton.
Good luck.