In my experience, glyphosphate does nothing to horsetail but most of the 24D type herbicides will work.
The problem with these is they work so quickly, sometimes within hours, that the residual on the horsetail will kill unintended plants when the horsetail falls on top of them.

Really, i didnt know that, the thing is as there is NOTHING in that garden i want to salvage so it should be ok then hopefully. I have heard glyphosate is effective after a few treatments as long as you crush them stems but you say the 24D herbicides are a better option. How do i get hold of some, which weedkillers contain it?

Many thanks.

If there is nothing to salvage, a mixture of 2% glyphosphate, 1% 24D and 1% mcpa should kill most everything. You will need only a light spray. We use this mix at 20 gal. per acre, which is not much.
The horsetail is another issue, it will come back, perhaps for several years, if it is well established.
As you are 'New To It', I suggest you read the lables on products available in your area and try to get an understanding of what you are buying and how these products work.

Thanks for the advice i appreciate it, we only have a very small garden so i would imagine it would be less than a gallon i would need. However the horsetail is everywhere and it seems very well established. Is there a way we can keep on top of it while killing it off over a few years. Something that breaks through the wax and kills it down to the root. There is just far too many to crush the stems on each one plus i dont think weve been doing it right anyway so the weedkiller is going to have no effect. What we have done for now is pulled most of them up and the plan is to wait till they come back and get them at a very early stage when they are only a few centimeters high, but we still need a way of getting through that waxy seal. Any tips?

My backyard borders onto a field and my flower garden was totally overrun with weeds (@ 16 x 20 feet of area). I tried this method and it worked but you have to be patient because it takes a year. We put down a vinyl pool cover over the area, kept it down all around the perimeter with bricks and laid bricks in the interior of the vinyl to weight it down against the elements. We waited for a year before we took it up and the whole area was sterilized. What was left was beautiful workable soil. We turned the garden over and I just amended the soil where I was planting. Then we added about six inches of shredded mulch and the weeds that we do get now are so easy to pull. Or, if I'm lazy, I just use Round-Up and wait for them to die on their own.

Thanks for the tip, i would like to try a different approach first of cutting everything back then turning over the soil and removing the top layer and waiting for everything to come back but kill it while its young and a bit more spread out as before i was spraying onto the garden and stuff underneath wasnt getting touched because its that thick. So then after a few weeks of killing anything that comes up put some top soil down to bring the garden back up to the level and then stick some decent turf down while saving some soil for some borders round the edges of the garden. With any luck if i look after the law with weed and feed stuff, plus cutting and watering it properly it may gain the upper hand over any weeds trying to break through.

Thats the plan anyway and ive already gone in today and blitzed it all with a strimmer and a lawnmower.

Just Curious, i tried to find a weedkiller with 24D but they are all very vauge about there package contents so i really dont know what to try because i think my plan will work for everything ni that garden except the hortail which is going to need killing a different way, unless glyphosate is more effective when it is very young, or i try crushing the stems of the ones that grow back and then applying glyphosate. I got some round-up that is apparently very strong glyphosate mix, much stronger than the normall stuff, so applying that in the right quantities in the right areas might do the job, on the back of the box it has a method of getting rid of horsetails specificly with how much mixture per square metre etc.

Wish me luck!!

Hi, my first post on this forum I'm currently tackling a similar project to this. I've strimmed all the weeds down and taken off the top layer of soil. That was 2 weeks ago and the weeds are back with a vengeance. The roots go down way under the patio (i've taken up the top row of flags and the roots are labyrinthine going all the way back under and everywhere).

At the moment i feel like i've achieved nothing, and if i dig up the tops of these weeds they'll just come back again.

Help!