Getting out of Growing Bamboo in Arizona!
Posted: Mon Jul 17, 2017 8:38 am
I haven't been nearly as active as I've wanted to be on this site as of late, originally because of dwindling free time, but more recently because I have slowly come to the realization that successfully growing bamboo in the Phoenix area is just not feasible, at least not anymore.
I say that mainly because, despite my best efforts and having spent enormous amounts of money replacing plants, trying different varieties and doing everything I possibly can, there's just no way to get them to thrive here. I do see, here and there, large, decades old clumps, mainly in places like the Phoenix Zoo and a few old-school nurseries, but other than that, I don't know anyone else that successfully grows up here in the "Valley of the Sun". At this point, I've come to the conclusion that establishing new plantings, whether they start at 1, 5, 10 or 15-gallon, is just not feasible. The summers have just gotten too hot, too dry and too insufferable for anything of that size to survive, much less thrive. Larger, established clumps/groves, I can see it, but new stuff just can't seem to acclimate enough to make it through the first or second year without enormous setbacks, one after the other. I have felt, for years now, that I've been trapped in this two-steps-forward, one-step-back scenario, but it gets worse with each passing year.
Case in point, this summer we've broken records left and right and last year was the same story. Monsoon comes late, temperatures get too hot, for too long, and nearly every clumper in the yard has become a crispy critter. It doesn't help that the intense heat brings out throngs of local spider mites, which have quite literally devoured even 15-gallon specimens to the point of complete top kill. I've used Forbid to beat them back most of the year, with high success, but once summer hits, it's too hot and too windy to apply and so all you can do is watch the plants be devoured. I have an Asian Lemon bamboo, 15-gallon with several 1" or so canes, that has been completely obliterated this season, top to bottom. The whole plant is littered with a fine dusting of husks, and not a single viable leaf or growth point. Withered, browned out and utterly dead. Even on the few lucky plants that, by chance have no evidence of spider mite issues, have burnt to a crisp in the unwavering heat. It hasn't been the 119F days that wiped them out, but the ridiculously long string of 110F or so for weeks on end, with consistent and unrelenting wind. No amount of watering was able to keep them from crisping up and bleaching out, despite my best efforts.
If you had seen them in the spring, when they were well grown, fertilized, mulched and full of life, you would never believe how they look now, much less that it was only a matter of weeks from one to the other. It is so incredibly disheartening, not for the money involved so much as the time and energy invested in getting them this far. If nothing else, I have learned that whatever success I had limping most of them through the summer before, it was clearly a tenuous victory at best. A few more degrees of average temperature was the difference between looking like crap and being cooked.
Since June, I have lost B. oldhamii (x5), Asian Lemon, chungii (for the second time), malingensis (for the second time), textilis v. gracilis, multiplex (silver stripe, 'Alphonse Karr', typical, golden goddess) x6, dolichoclada 'stripe' and G. apus dead to the ground. The hangers on, which I give 50/50 odds at best, are B. dissimulator, B. bambos and B. dolichomerithalla 'silver stripe'. Of the three, 'Silver Stripe' gets almost too much shade, tucked behind a large orange tree, but it hasn't been enough to stop it from drying out almost completely. There is no evidence of spider mite damage either, it's just the hot, dry air and wind.
I'm not putting this out there for sympathy or because I want to bellyache about my problems, but because I would hope to spare others the trouble I have been through and the disappointment I am now reaping after so much energy put into this. Year after year, the plants have struggled, and in all that time I've almost never gotten more than a single shoot that survived to become a cane. Some plants, many in fact, never produced any. The 'Silver Stripe' even in choice digs with ample shade, has yet to produce a cane in over two years. Not a single one. This is a 15-gallon planting that already had 3 or 4 canes when I put it in, not some minuscule sprig.
It's sad to say, but the constant struggle has finally gotten the better of them, and by extension the better of me. I just can't keep replacing expensive specimens in the hope that it was something I'm doing wrong or that it was bad luck or a bad time to plant or whatever else. At some point you just have to accept that the climate is just beyond what the plants can tolerate or ever adapt to, and that's the conclusion I've ultimately reached after the last few years.
As I've said to others, I may not be professional plantsman, but not a novice. I've grown a lot of things successfully in my yard, palms from seed to 20 foot specimens, grapes from tiny plantings into full rows that I can actually harvest from, three kinds of citrus, dyckia, hechtia and deutercohnia, succulents aplenty and even an agave collection (over 115 species at present). I can count my non-bamboo losses over the last couple of years on a single hand. If I were to count my bamboo losses in the same time frame, I would need run out of fingers and toes and still not be done.
If someone is seriously growing successfully in the Phoenix area, I would genuinely like to know what species and how they are able to make it work or what they're doing that I'm not. At this point though, my stance is that whatever dies will be replaced with something other than bamboo, and those that do survive will be dug up and trashed if they haven't thrived by the time something else comes along for which I could use the space. Maybe that sounds terrible, but life is too short to limp along plants that struggle every year. Seeing your plants grow well and thrive is what inspires me, but seeing them struggle and die a slow death only a few weeks after they looked their best? That just makes me sad and puts me off, to the point where I don't even want to be out the yard.
So let this lengthy posting be a warning to those that want to try establishing clumping bamboo in the Valley of the Sun. Don't make the mistake I did and assume you can plant a bunch of varieties and have a nice collection of clumping bamboo that will grow well and eventually thrive. More than likely you'll have plants that look great most of the year and then burn to a crisp in the summer, thanks to record breaking heat, late monsoon and our lovely local spider mite population.
I say that mainly because, despite my best efforts and having spent enormous amounts of money replacing plants, trying different varieties and doing everything I possibly can, there's just no way to get them to thrive here. I do see, here and there, large, decades old clumps, mainly in places like the Phoenix Zoo and a few old-school nurseries, but other than that, I don't know anyone else that successfully grows up here in the "Valley of the Sun". At this point, I've come to the conclusion that establishing new plantings, whether they start at 1, 5, 10 or 15-gallon, is just not feasible. The summers have just gotten too hot, too dry and too insufferable for anything of that size to survive, much less thrive. Larger, established clumps/groves, I can see it, but new stuff just can't seem to acclimate enough to make it through the first or second year without enormous setbacks, one after the other. I have felt, for years now, that I've been trapped in this two-steps-forward, one-step-back scenario, but it gets worse with each passing year.
Case in point, this summer we've broken records left and right and last year was the same story. Monsoon comes late, temperatures get too hot, for too long, and nearly every clumper in the yard has become a crispy critter. It doesn't help that the intense heat brings out throngs of local spider mites, which have quite literally devoured even 15-gallon specimens to the point of complete top kill. I've used Forbid to beat them back most of the year, with high success, but once summer hits, it's too hot and too windy to apply and so all you can do is watch the plants be devoured. I have an Asian Lemon bamboo, 15-gallon with several 1" or so canes, that has been completely obliterated this season, top to bottom. The whole plant is littered with a fine dusting of husks, and not a single viable leaf or growth point. Withered, browned out and utterly dead. Even on the few lucky plants that, by chance have no evidence of spider mite issues, have burnt to a crisp in the unwavering heat. It hasn't been the 119F days that wiped them out, but the ridiculously long string of 110F or so for weeks on end, with consistent and unrelenting wind. No amount of watering was able to keep them from crisping up and bleaching out, despite my best efforts.
If you had seen them in the spring, when they were well grown, fertilized, mulched and full of life, you would never believe how they look now, much less that it was only a matter of weeks from one to the other. It is so incredibly disheartening, not for the money involved so much as the time and energy invested in getting them this far. If nothing else, I have learned that whatever success I had limping most of them through the summer before, it was clearly a tenuous victory at best. A few more degrees of average temperature was the difference between looking like crap and being cooked.
Since June, I have lost B. oldhamii (x5), Asian Lemon, chungii (for the second time), malingensis (for the second time), textilis v. gracilis, multiplex (silver stripe, 'Alphonse Karr', typical, golden goddess) x6, dolichoclada 'stripe' and G. apus dead to the ground. The hangers on, which I give 50/50 odds at best, are B. dissimulator, B. bambos and B. dolichomerithalla 'silver stripe'. Of the three, 'Silver Stripe' gets almost too much shade, tucked behind a large orange tree, but it hasn't been enough to stop it from drying out almost completely. There is no evidence of spider mite damage either, it's just the hot, dry air and wind.
I'm not putting this out there for sympathy or because I want to bellyache about my problems, but because I would hope to spare others the trouble I have been through and the disappointment I am now reaping after so much energy put into this. Year after year, the plants have struggled, and in all that time I've almost never gotten more than a single shoot that survived to become a cane. Some plants, many in fact, never produced any. The 'Silver Stripe' even in choice digs with ample shade, has yet to produce a cane in over two years. Not a single one. This is a 15-gallon planting that already had 3 or 4 canes when I put it in, not some minuscule sprig.
It's sad to say, but the constant struggle has finally gotten the better of them, and by extension the better of me. I just can't keep replacing expensive specimens in the hope that it was something I'm doing wrong or that it was bad luck or a bad time to plant or whatever else. At some point you just have to accept that the climate is just beyond what the plants can tolerate or ever adapt to, and that's the conclusion I've ultimately reached after the last few years.
As I've said to others, I may not be professional plantsman, but not a novice. I've grown a lot of things successfully in my yard, palms from seed to 20 foot specimens, grapes from tiny plantings into full rows that I can actually harvest from, three kinds of citrus, dyckia, hechtia and deutercohnia, succulents aplenty and even an agave collection (over 115 species at present). I can count my non-bamboo losses over the last couple of years on a single hand. If I were to count my bamboo losses in the same time frame, I would need run out of fingers and toes and still not be done.
If someone is seriously growing successfully in the Phoenix area, I would genuinely like to know what species and how they are able to make it work or what they're doing that I'm not. At this point though, my stance is that whatever dies will be replaced with something other than bamboo, and those that do survive will be dug up and trashed if they haven't thrived by the time something else comes along for which I could use the space. Maybe that sounds terrible, but life is too short to limp along plants that struggle every year. Seeing your plants grow well and thrive is what inspires me, but seeing them struggle and die a slow death only a few weeks after they looked their best? That just makes me sad and puts me off, to the point where I don't even want to be out the yard.
So let this lengthy posting be a warning to those that want to try establishing clumping bamboo in the Valley of the Sun. Don't make the mistake I did and assume you can plant a bunch of varieties and have a nice collection of clumping bamboo that will grow well and eventually thrive. More than likely you'll have plants that look great most of the year and then burn to a crisp in the summer, thanks to record breaking heat, late monsoon and our lovely local spider mite population.