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Since I've been having problems with my shoulders and a few vertebraes in my neck, I've been trying to limiting my hard digging I used to do digging out bamboo. I have a customer who has been after me for a while to dig out a large B. oldhamii for him, but until recently I had been declining his requests. I decided to try a new approach. One that does not involve digging, but without digging I would not know where to cut the rhizome away from the mother plant. Using a 13 inch pruning saw and the above method, I took the little over 4 inch diameter B. oldhamii below out of the ground without any digging. It took a lot less effort and the cutting point came out exactly as I wanted it to.

Yesterday, I decided to try "cutting" out of the ground another B. oldhamii. This time I decided to take a few pictures along the way.

Picture # 1
The red handled knife is what I used to saw all the way around the rhizome and roots. Looking a the branch buds, I could tell that the culm I wanted to extract from the ground was growing off of the mother culm that the knife blade is laying against. I made sure that I sawed right up against the mother plant so that I would cut the rhizome at the neck of the plant I was extracting from the ground. This pictures shows that I have already sawed all the way around the culm division and that I have used a pry bar to pop it out of the ground.

Picture # 2
I'm beginning to move the rhizome rootball to the right in an attempt to get it out of the hole.

Picture # 3
Making progress. I had to trim a little bit off of the hole, on the right hand side, to get the rectangular rootball to slide and lift out of the hole.

Picture # 4
Almost out of the hole. The top of the culm is being held up by a large live oak tree branch. If the culm had of been out in the open, then I could have just pushed it over and allowed it to mostly lift itself out of the hole, but I have a lot of trees and I'm not willing to cut any of them. The trees provide a lot of shade and make my house more tolerable to live in; the house being mostly shaded from the hot Florida Summer sun.

Picture # 5
Out of the hole!

Picture # 6
Pic. shows where I cut the rhizome from the mother plant.

Picture # 7
Showing the side of the new division where I cut it from the mother plant. Since it is about time for my B. oldhamii to start shooting, there were 2 new shoots that were growing underground that I had to cut through. You can see these 2, plus where I cut the rhiozome at the neck of the rhizome.

Picture # 8
Shows the top of the culm being pulled from the tree branches. Note that where the rhizome rootball is now, is not next to the original clump that I took the plant from. The original clump is just to the right of the picnic table in the back of the picture.

Picture # 9
Down and out of the trees. Now I can top it.

Picture # 10
Topped at about 16 feet above ground level. The way my B. oldhamii grows, it puts out a few branch buds on several basal nodes, then it skips putting out branch buds, then then starts back up with branch buds between 10 to 20 feet up the culm. Cutting at 16 feet gives me branch buds at the bottom and branch buds at the top.

I would have taken some more pictures, but the old Summertime lightning started cracking down and I had to hurry. I laid the rhizome rootball under my "new division" sprinkling system and covered the rootball with about 10 towels so that the roots would remain moist. Then I took my tools and hurried into my house.

The cut out rootball measures approximately 16 in X 20 inches X 15 inches deep.


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They say a picture is worth a thousand words. That's great stuff Roy, definitely gives me a lot more confidence to have a shot at something like that myself when the opportunity arises. It looks like your pruning saw gets through your sandy soil pretty well, I think for me anyway it might prove more of a challenge in our heavier clay soil. I'm glad I went to a bit of extra effort now to mound up each planting on a bit of compost/sandy loam.

nice work, where's that cut culm going again ?

blokker wrote:They say a picture is worth a thousand words. That's great stuff Roy, definitely gives me a lot more confidence to have a shot at something like that myself when the opportunity arises. It looks like your pruning saw gets through your sandy soil pretty well, I think for me anyway it might prove more of a challenge in our heavier clay soil. I'm glad I went to a bit of extra effort now to mound up each planting on a bit of compost/sandy loam.

blokker,

You're right about the sandy soil being easier to get my saw to cut through. In my digging days, I dug down to at least waist deep in my backyard and I've never did find any hard soil.

Wal wrote:nice work, where's that cut culm going again ?

Wal,

Well, that another story. If someone comes by in the next few day and wants to adopt it, for a fee of course, then I'll let it go on its way. If not, then I really don't want to pot it into a huge pot because then it will be too heavy for me to move. I'm thinking about doing a little experimenting.

I'm thinking about putting a piece of flexible plastic on the ground, then sitting the rootball on top of it and tying the culm up so that the culm will be standing vertically. Then I think I will take some building blocks (8 inch X 8 inch X 16 inch) and stack up around it to make enclosure (square block pot) and then filling the enclosure with compost. The plastic will keep the roots from growing into the ground, and the compost is light weight and will allow the roots to develop until I get a suitable couple wanting to adopt it.

funny thing is.......

I get that much rootball on a phyllostachys, but maybe only a couple pencil size culms. Quite a difference.

rfgpitt wrote:funny thing is.......

I get that much rootball on a phyllostachys, but maybe only a couple pencil size culms. Quite a difference.

A big difference too is that with temperate bamboos, one must make sure to keep the culm attached to the rhizome. In tropical bamboos, one just cuts the rhizome neck, where it is attached to the mother plant, and away you go.

The saga continues.

I had a couple who wanted to adopt my "little baby" B. oldhamii, so I have 2 follow-up pictures.

Picture # 1
The B. oldhamii plant has been prepared for a trip and loaded on to my trusty steed. I left the back window in and just opened the mid-gate. This would allow me to slide the 16 X 20 inch rhizome ball through the mid-gate and under the back window. (plus I could continue to run the A/C in the now hot and humid Florida) The "rhizome ball" would be sitting up against the back of the front seat. This would also give me 3 extra feet of room, which would mean that there would be 3 less feet that would have to stick out the back. I definitely did not want to attract any attention from any of the sheriff's deputies as I drove through 8 lanes of traffic with vehicles all around me.

Picture # 2
Here's a picture of the proud adopting couple. Just look at the smile of joy on the father's face. Look also on the front of his pants and you can see where he has been down on his hands and knees praying and also preparing a dirt manger to cradle the new baby B. oldhamii culm. The adopting mother, in the light blue clothing in the background, is conferring with one of the "delivery doctors" about the successful transplant.

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I always make the mistake of underestimating the weight of a root ball. If you cut it to big you can't lift the freaking boo out of the hole! If you dig a deep trench on one side you can let it fall over into it then dig a ramp out and pull and slide the root ball out. I transplanted a G. Atro. and an Old oldhamii this way all in one day but had help to lift, dig and pull.

And to make things much much heavier we sat the root balls into plastic concrete mixing troffs to soak in water. A necessary evil to keep the roots wet in the hot summer while transplanting.

mike best wrote:I always make the mistake of underestimating the weight of a root ball. If you cut it to big you can't lift the freaking boo out of the hole! If you dig a deep trench on one side you can let it fall over into it then dig a ramp out and pull and slide the root ball out. I transplanted a G. Atro. and an Old oldhamii this way all in one day but had help to lift, dig and pull.

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Mike,

That's some large culms you are moving. Getting them out of the hole can be hard, but if you leave too much "top", then you have a hard time getting the boo back vertical. Plus the better your staking job had better be.

I now top tall bamboos for transport and transplanting because it is less stress on me and the boo, though I use to do it the hard way like it was a palm tree going into some fancy resort planting or something.

Finally looked at this thread with high-speed, the thing that catches my eye is how much deeper the roots go. Generally the temperate bamboos don't require more than 4-8 inches of soil depth for viable divisions, but they do require lots more width of rootmass so probably comparable weight to deal with. To keep the weight down, I generally dig 6-8 culm diameters of a soil ball around the perimeter of the culm but first find the 'mother' rhizome and walk it out a few more feet before severing it - something like the letter 'Q' . Then, I wash the soil off that part careful to not damage the roots/buds. That length of rhizome can then be wrapped around the soil ball inside the pot. Smaller pots, less weight, less backfilling, more roots/rhizome mass/buds. I also exclusively use squat containers for the extra width, the pot height is not needed.

New life being regenerated 16 feet off of the ground.