Hi guys.

I got my bisetti home today. Thanks to all your great ideas regarding the transport, I wrapped them in plastic and it went smoothly. Based on other advice from several of you, I didn't put them in the ground yet; I put them in pots temporarily.

They are 5-gallon plants that have been potted for a year. They are very well rooted. In fact, they may be a bit root bound. Many of the plants had rhizomes wrapped around the dirt ball. Most of the rhizomes remained tightly wound around the dirt ball after I removed the newspaper and plastic, but one of them unwrapped itself. That rhizome was at least a couple feet long. My guess is all of the plants have a similar amount of rhizome growth.

Is there anything special I should do when putting them in to ground? I want to prevent breaking any buds on the rhizomes. Is there any danger to the rhizomes when I drag the pots outside during the day and back into (unheated) garage at night?

What should I do with two feet of rhizome when I plant it? Do I keep it in a circle? Stretch it out? If the rhizome stays wound around the dirt ball, should I unwrap it?

On a related note, how many shoots should I expect this season and how large? The plants are about 8 feet tall and the culms are from a 1/4" to 3/4" thick.

It's embarrassing how exciting this stuff is!

jp

When I planted my P Areosulcata alata, it had some wrapped roots, but nothing horrible. I didnt loosen the root ball, just plnted it. It put out 13 culms within a month of planting it, and these were slightly smaller then the existing culmts. This has happened to every bamboo I plant. I dont losen the roots, I just plant it. They shoot pretty well, and they all generally had culms slightly smaller then the existing culms.

The only bamboo I planted (OUt of , F Rufa and F Scabrida, P Areosulcata, and Pseudosasa Japonica), that put out larger culms, was the Fargesia Scabrida. The thing did not stop shooting until the first really heavy frost. I killed it with poor protection/wrong plant