Textilis No to Little Shooting

[boolover]

My 4 B. Textilis Mutabilis are having the worst shooting season. All were put in the ground in between 2007-2009. One of them has NO shoots, and the other 3 have 2-3 shoots that popped out of ground about a 10 days ago, and have barely budged since. Wondering if I over-fertilized them back in the Spring. As I recall, I used 10-10-10, but may have spread more than usual around each.

Other clumpers are having a pretty good season. The possibility of over-fertilizing may be the culprit because during late spring, many of our 30 or so clumpers slowly replaced most or all of their leaves which had turned yellow and dropped. I don't recall ever seeing this behavior in prior years...

Live in Hudson Florida, about one hour northwest of Tampa.

Anyone have thoughts?

[nu2bamboo]

boolover,

I am up in Spring Hill and my Mutabilis has never really been a great shooter for me on average it may send up 5 new shoots per year and never really gains any size. It kind of just maintains. Now on the other hand, my gracilis goes crazy with new shoots every year. I do not have any scientific data but it does sound plausible that you may have over fertilized.

[Allen Sher]

Interesting! I, too, find that my (2) gracilis are very prolific. One of them puts up maybe 30-40 shoots each year, while my other one puts up maybe 15. The latter gets less sun; however, the culms are thicker.

I also have a Textillis weavers that puts up about 20 shoots each year, but only about 1/2 survive. It's like the plant over-produces and then runs out of energy.

All of my bamboo were planted within the last 5 years.

Thanks for your input!

[marcat]

I know you guys have had a lot of rain but is this plant in a place that doesn't retain moisture well? Nothing here is shooting very much that isn't receiving extra water do to our drought.
MarCat

[Allen Sher]

We have had lots of rain; probably the most since 2004 when we had visits from a couple of tropical storms. Actually, this is the first summer in years that I have not had to use our drip irrigations system to supplement rainfall. Many of our plants, and ALL of our bamboo have drip irrigation on timers. So, I've been diligent about keeping the roots moist since 2008 when we put our first B. multiplex alphonse karr in the ground.

[webgator]

My main Mutabilis stand from my count has about 36 new shoots on it. This is after I took probably 15 divisions from it and cleared some of the leaf mass as well as thinning some of the old culms out of the center. This particular stand gets only rainwater and has gotten no additional fertilizer this year from me.

Other Mutabilis stands in my yard (the result of divisions that did not sell, so they were put in the ground) are producing shoots nearly double the size of last years and get the same care as the mother stand.

Pic of the parent stand, new shoots are appr 2" diameter