Where to Buy Timber Bamboo?

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terrabamboo
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Re: Where to Buy Timber Bamboo?

Post by terrabamboo »

ShmuBamboo wrote:
Panda wrote:Why won't a rhizome grow a tall bamboo shoot within a couple years? Is the rhizome what the cane grows from? Is it just because it has to establish roots or something?
The plants need to size up all the elements (culms, leaves, roots and rhizomes) to support full size culm shoots. Usually they go through a growth cycle from juvenile to adult size over a period of years, getting progressively larger. I have found that the time of year makes a huge difference in rhizome propagation, and they do best when cut right when the rhizome eyes are swelling (for Phyllostachys that is late winter/early spring here). They also will size up faster if you have a greenhouse (or warm climate) and feed them a lot. They grow faster in pots to begin with for me, as the pots will keep the voles from eating the rhizomes and the pots can be moved to warm locations in winter months to keep them from freezing. I dig the pots into the ground to keep them warmer in winter and cooler in summer.
When you dig the pots into the ground, do you ever have trouble removing them later? I just set some Robert Young 15ga pots atop the ground in July and already 1 month later a rhizome has worked its way outside the container bottom hole and 3 feet into the ground making it difficult to pick up the container!!
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ShmuBamboo
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Re: Where to Buy Timber Bamboo?

Post by ShmuBamboo »

fandelem wrote: When you dig the pots into the ground, do you ever have trouble removing them later? I just set some Robert Young 15ga pots atop the ground in July and already 1 month later a rhizome has worked its way outside the container bottom hole and 3 feet into the ground making it difficult to pick up the container!!
Yes, that happens to me. I have had it happen with potted boos sunk into the ground, and also sitting on the ground or on a patio. Cases in point, this year I had one boo with escaped rhizomes. It was a Phy. nigra in a 10 gallon tub that was sitting on a concrete patio with one drain hole sitting next to the lawn, and a rhizome ran out, down and into the lawn last winter. I tried to move the pot this spring and it was stuck... and so I cut the rhizome and moved the pot. If it shoots later on I will dig it up and pot it, as I do not want a boo there. I also have a Phy. Atrovaginata in a 7 gallon tub sunk in the ground in the boo nursery area up front of my house with 50 or so other boos in pots sunk in the ground. That boo had a rhizome run out a drain hole that shot last spring. I let it grow, as that was a good position for an Atro to be planted in the ground. This year it has 3 new shoots. When they leaf out and the culm hardens off, I will cut the pot and move it, and let the Atro grow in the ground there. That is actually a good way to establish runner bamboos, and I have established several Phy. vivax and Ps. japonicas in the ground that way. It is a good way to establish boos in a vole infested area (like here) and it does not require any work to establish a boo that way.
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dependable
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Re: Where to Buy Timber Bamboo?

Post by dependable »

On a similar note, and I know I've said this before; A good way to propagate plants is to train escaping rhizome, from a pot or a grove, into drain hole of another (I use 15 or 25 gallon) plastic pot filled with rich growth medium. You are very likely to have a nice plant in a year with no digging.
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Re: Where to Buy Timber Bamboo?

Post by ShmuBamboo »

dependable wrote:On a similar note, and I know I've said this before; A good way to propagate plants is to train escaping rhizome, from a pot or a grove, into drain hole of another (I use 15 or 25 gallon) plastic pot filled with rich growth medium. You are very likely to have a nice plant in a year with no digging.
I tried that once but it did not work. Well, it worked to a point, but the Phy. nigra rhizome just ran out the other side of the pot through another drain hole!
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Re: Where to Buy Timber Bamboo?

Post by johnw »

Shmubamboo

Given time do you think eventually they would have rooted and budded despite its onward march?

I tried it with a Sasa oshidensis we got in a 1 gallon last year. Shoots from the drainage holes lost their growing tips in shipping. I trained them into 2 x 1 gallon pots but they were so short they stayed underground. No one on the forum would commit that this would work. Nothing surfaced last year but in late June 2013 strong leafy shoots surfaced. Now more pots have had shoots with tips routed through the drainage holes - these were long enough so the leafy parts were above the rims.

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Re: Where to Buy Timber Bamboo?

Post by ShmuBamboo »

johnw wrote:Shmubamboo
Given time do you think eventually they would have rooted and budded despite its onward march?
It would depend on the number of eyes in the section of rhizome in the pot I guess. It was already rooting. Also I could have cut the rhizome on the other side of the pot and likely forced a shoot from the end/potted section. I have had that happen with Bory rhizome end single culm shoots that I cut and potted up. The potted Bory shot two more small size culms from the rhizome the next year, and the mother plant shot a huge culm from just inside where I cut the rhizomes. If the nigra rhizome was allowed to march (presumably on its quest to find and strangle Caryn Rickel) it would tend to shoot from near the end of the rhizome. In that experiment I cut the pot in half, removed it and re-buried the rhizome. I moved out later that year (rental) and I have not been back to see if that boo is still there.
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dependable
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Re: Where to Buy Timber Bamboo?

Post by dependable »

This works using larger pots, and around 3 ft of rhizome which I circle well into the pot, have never had this method fail. Usually I have to enlarge the drain hole I am pulling the rhizome into.
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