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My 8 yr. old Moso grove is finally putting up big culms but last year it decided to shoot on March 3 due to a very mild February. Moso is always the first to shoot here but usually waits till early April. I was wondering if this happened to anyone else in the deep south? (south central, AL) I am trying to figure out a way to shade the ground so it is not stimulated to shoot this early as I lost a good portion of the culms last spring Due to a later frost/freeze. Any ideas?

The grove is in front of my kitchen window which faces a catfish pond, due East and gets the morning sun.

often if you mulch with something light colored, and put a fairly deep layer on it, you will prevent early shooting, as the ground stays cooler. I had the same thing happen with some P. nigra Bory last year, so this year I mulched with a layer of straw. Dark color mulches can absorb heat if you get a warm spell, and cause early shooting. I think this is more of a problem where the plant does get all day light, as the ground has more time to warm up.

hope that helps some!

in my location, not very far from yours, Moso shoots fairly consistently on or about Mar. 16 (my daughter's birthday); and yes, we can suffer frosts past this time, but the overhanging older culms generally provide enough coverage to protect the young stuff.
some Moso potted seedlings produced shooots in december and had to be moved into the greenhouse.
i do not think that you can control this, but i found the idea of selectively mulching them interesting. a warm late winter, then a coldsnap, spells trouble. i am experiencing "spring" as of the last few days- mayhaws and pears are flowering, and the Phyllostachys praecox (latin for "early", or"premature") should appear any second, those beautiful bright red shoots. i'll be out with the flashlight, looking, tonight.

If you hear that a frost is coming, you can temporarily cover your new shoots with plastic or cloth or anything soft that will give it insulation to get through the cold but not hurt the shoots.

sunkejie wrote:If you hear that a frost is coming, you can temporarily cover your new shoots with plastic or cloth or anything soft that will give it insulation to get through the cold but not hurt the shoots.

But if you have a frost, without the air temp getting below 32 F, then all you would need is a cover just to keep the dew off of the shoots. Here in Tampa, we tend to difference between a frost and a freeze, although you can have both at the same time. It didn't freeze in my neighborhood last month, but there is a lot of foliage damage because of a frost we had the second night. I didn't have any damage because most of my plants have large trees overhead and that kept the dew off of my plants and the trees also help to cut down on radiant cooling, much as what a cloud will do.

I've seen Phyllostachys, Sasa, Bashania, Fargesia etc shoots take light frost and freezes without any damage. Generally if it stays in the 28+ range they seem to do allright, the sole exception was 2 years ago when it suddenly shot into the 80's for 5 days, then dropped into the low 20's after that hot streak. Too much of a sudden change and even these guys all were killed.

We've been very warm for a spell now but it was a more gradual warm up, no freezing temps for several days but Friday AM we'll see the upper 20's for one night then no more freezes in the extended forecast. I'm assuming that the shoots up will all be fine so I'll test my theory again although as of today none of the Phy's had started, Praecox, Harbin Inversa, Spectabilis may pop up in the next few days and we're sure to have more freezes down the road.

Ok, here are the forecast lows for the next few days: 31 F, 52 F, 31 F, 25 F, 29 F.

Obviously Monday (25 F) is the killer, and I'm going to have to do some mulching to protect the just-emerging shoots, and use a lot of boxes/pots for the larger ones. Those that can't be mulched are my bissetii, whose shoots are about 18" tall and not too thick (Sharpie thick or less), my 'Rufa', and my topkilled robusta.

Are all of the opening leaf buds (Semiarundinaria, Sasa, Sasaella) goners? What about the leaf buds that are swelling but haven't opened yet? If all of these leaf buds get fried, will the plants produce more?

Do I need to be worried about 31 F too with the small tender shoots, or just the 25 F night?

Alan, I've learned not to trust those late spring lows as forecast, proceed as each night will be 25F - ignore the 31F. I'd box the taller shoots worth saving and mulch/blanket the shorter ones. Careful with the mulch, don't use anything too wet it may cook them during the daytime, ideally I guess uncover/recover each AM/PM. I cooked a 1.5 inch diameter Moso shoot a few years back trying to protect it.

Hard to say on the leaf buds but my guess is that they'll survive. Although it has been consistently fairly warm we have not really had the extreme sudden warm up and sudden hard freeze right after so they may O.K., hard to say for sure. They are forecasting 25F then 29F here as well and I'm not covering anything at all so I'll let you know how that turns out.

It seems they've revised our forecast for tonight a little and now they're saying low of 28 F instead of 25 F . I already spent quite a bit of time covering my bissetii shoots with buckets and pots yesterday evening (and my Rufa with a giant box) so I'm just going to leave those on until tomorrow when it's above freezing.

I had covered the bissetii shoots Friday night too, then uncovered Sat. when it got into the 60's. Last night I had to figure out which buckets/pots/garbage cans to use on which shoots all over again because the shoots had grown a few more inches and some of them were too tall for their original covers now.

I'm hoping they don't grow too much and run out of room before tomorrow when I uncover them. I also left a few uncovered, as a comparison.