Ideas for "tagging" your ages on a large grove

[terrabamboo]

I am considering different ways to tag each years growth. It is simple when it is less than an acre, but does anyone have any suggestions on land greater than 1 acre? Assuming 100 acres, mature grove, 500 new culms/acre (50,000 taggings/yr) (I realize it may be upwards of 1500 culms/acre which would be like 150,000 taggings/year but let's keep things simple at 50K

[Alan_L]

Wow, huge project! If it were me, I'd probably tag every culm each year. Different years have different color tags, and put each year's tags at a slightly different height. By "tag" I'm thinking of paint. So the first year, paint every culm with a white stripe. Next year use red and paint every culm. The next year, blue, etc. By painting every culm every year you don't worry about double-tagging or missing culms (every culm gets painted every year). You can then always tell the age of the culm by the number of stripes on it.

I actually envision your grove with access paths cut in it, maybe wide enough to drive a vehicle of some kind down? Then maybe you can just spray the paint. Don't know. Big job!

[terrabamboo]

This is the tip of the iceberg.... I am trying to secure another 200 acres before year end!!

Anyone know anyone who might have a 800 2-4yr old culms (timber bamboo only) in a grove I could spend a month digging up and transplanting?? Somewhere near Central MS?? Otherwise I am looking at having to wait two more years before I can divide from my groves :--/

[needmore]

I don't think that you'll need/want to mark the culms for a few years, for the initial 5 years or so they will be upsizing and you'll cull the older ones so if your intent is to mark for culm harvesting you probably have lots of time to figure out a system. Someone I know writes on his with a sharpie but not thousands of them!

[marcat]

I am betting Brad is right you have time to figure out a system but paint seems to be your only option. Check out he paint markers that the forestry people use.
MarCat

[foxd]

An idea just occurred to me. Why not have a bunch of rings with the year on them and walk through the grove during shooting season dropping the rings over the shoots? Admittedly the rings wouldn't be at eye level height, but you would at least have the culms dated fairly quickly.

[terrabamboo]

Yep, next 5 years I am good. Just brainstorming.

150,000 rings might be expensive in 5 years when they are 3" in diameter ?

I like the idea of lanes--grid-like-- which make it easier to run through with a gator and spray some paint on the culms. I already have "lanes" for irrigation.

Only thing would possibly be a need to remove that paint upon harvesting...

[Alan_L]

Only thing would possibly be a need to remove that paint upon harvesting...

The choice is between taking more time/effort up front to tag them with something more removable, or take the time to remove the paint later. It seems that removing the paint could be automated in some way maybe.

[needmore]

If your plan is to harvest only 2nd & 3rd year culms you can probably tell by culm color - the darkest green, and next to darkest green are too young, they'll be less than 2 years so lighter colored ones may be enough to focus on and the lightest ones should also be obvious once they are older than what you want to harvest. It is fairly easy to point out in a grove but probably doesn't translate well into text?

[Alan_L]

I was extending this and thinking about harvesting... do you want to manually walk through x-hundred acres, choosing the "right" culms for harvest? I'd think not, even if you had a team of people cutting. I think I remember reading somewhere that some commercial bamboo groves are harvested in strips, where all of the culms are cut and collected from that strip. I think that article mentioned a 3-year cycle, so 1/3 of the grove's culms were harvested each year, but I don't see why you couldn't change that 4 or 5-year cycles.

This (in theory) makes cutting the culms much easier as supposedly it could be done mechanically. It does require sorting of culms after they're cut though, and you'd end up with young culms that weren't strong enough (some would be this year's). I suppose those inferior culms could be used for processing into paper or rayon or mulched for the rest of the grove.

[terrabamboo]

This (in theory) makes cutting the culms much easier as supposedly it could be done mechanically. It does require sorting of culms after they're cut though, and you'd end up with young culms that weren't strong enough (some would be this year's). I suppose those inferior culms could be used for processing into paper or rayon or mulched for the rest of the grove.

Now you're talking! Any thoughts on an automatic bamboo sorting machine?? Maybe you would know average "mature" weight of culm (de-branched) and the sorter could then put those in a separate pile. Kind of like a large coin change machine??

[stevelau1911]

I know that Dave Andrew down in MD would stamp his new culms each year with the year that they emerged and he happens to have some culms over 20 years old as I've seen some of them marked as something like 1991. He does it at eye level, and goes through his groves each spring to get them stamped while the culms are still fairly tender at about eye level.


In regards to the weight of the culms. I find that new culms tend to get heavier and heavier as they thicken up throughout the season, and generally keep that weight through the 2nd year. I find that the weight seems to noticeably decrease with 3rd year culms. You can kind of tell by grabbing the culms and shaking them to find about about how much they weight, relative to other culms.

[canadianplant]

Beer caps and a key ring?

[zxylene]

I think what might work good easy and fast is an ink stamper like to stamp mail, food packages etc. Just get good water proof ink. That is what I am going to try so far I just need to get the stuff.

[foxd]

There are also cable ties with tags for writing information that can be bought in bulk. Here's an example:

http://www.amazon.com/Cable-Tie-Tag-Bel ... le+tie+tag