Last year I planted 2 kings of bamboo along my fence. The plants struggled to grow all summer in 100 degree heat and no rain I kept them watered and they did ok. I planted 3 roots each root sent up 1 bamboo cane. I have 2 kinds of bamboo one kind grows 2" diameter bamboo about 25 ft tall. The other kind grows 1/2" diameter bamboo about 12 ft tall. I have 2 of the 2" diameter bamboo plants and 1 of the 1/2" diameter plants. All the plants have sent up new canes this spring now I have 7 new canes coming up. It has gone from 3 canes to 7 in one year so it has doubled in 1 year. I want it to spread the full length of my 240 ft fence but at this rate it will take 30 years.
Can I dig up all the new canes and transplate them about 20 ft apart or should I wait until next year?
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hit or miss
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applestar
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You want their root systems to get established so no, don't divide.
next year they will send up more shoots several feet away, and another several feet away the year after that. And they won't ONLY spread in the directions you want them to -- their efforts will be radial in 360° more or less after they are completely established, though first set of shoots will give you an indication of which way the initial runners are headed.
Are they good eating bamboo?
next year they will send up more shoots several feet away, and another several feet away the year after that. And they won't ONLY spread in the directions you want them to -- their efforts will be radial in 360° more or less after they are completely established, though first set of shoots will give you an indication of which way the initial runners are headed.
Are they good eating bamboo?
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Rogue11
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soil wrote:don't divide, keep it well fed and watered where you want it to grow, before you know it you will have tons of bamboo. its one of the fastest growing plants on the planet for a reason.
Yep, I can vouch for that. Our neighbor has bamboo and we have the hardest time trying to keep it out of our garden. So unless you have a very huge property and no neighbors around you that might get annoyed (or maybe some you do want to annoy
) I suggest you take tomc's advice and create a soil barrier.-
dirtyfingers
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Correct. Bamboo is invasive as all get-out.dirtyfingers wrote:I dug up about thirty feet of bamboo along a wall at my son's house. If you saw my thread about the wild flowers, that whole section was solid bamboo! I was digging up new shoots for weeks!
An FYI about bamboo. The trash company doesn't want bamboo in the green waste.
I fought it for 17 years at our house in Berkeley. And it can grow from small pieces; that's why the green-waste people don't want it.However, if you have nice, large stalks of it, offer them on Freecycle.org (your local list) to folks for whatever uses they may have for it: teepees for beans and peas to climb up, scaffolding for other gardening purposes, who knows what they may want it for? I've seen some creative uses of bamboo in the Bay Area, where the stuff is all over the place and not one waste-management system will accept it.
So give Freecycle.org a try.
Good luck!
Cynthia H.
Sunset Zone 17, USDA Zone 9
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dirtyfingers
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I built a large "dirt sifter" just for the dirt around the bamboo. I removed ever little piece of root left in the dirt and just when I thought it was done, a new shoot would pop up a few feet away from where the main bunch was. I decided to just dig up all the dirt for a few feet away from the area and went down about a foot deep. I noticed that the bamboo roots didn't go very deep, just wide!cynthia_h wrote: Bamboo is invasive as all get-out.