Winter 2014/2015

[Tarzanus]

We are at the end of second polar vortex that is predicted to hit again after quick thaw and temporary temperature rise. I think lowest temperature was -15C on several occasions, daily high remained well below freezing for quite some time and we've also had windy and sunny weather - not the best situation. Well, I only tarped Borinda fungosa seedling which is by far the most sensitive, but it looks like other bamboos might also suffer.

Perhaps the last green photo of my beloved seedling


tied down and tarped. Sadly there was not much snow and it remained exposed much more that I'd like.


I hope it survives and I also hope there will be no more polar air around here. Too cold for my liking.


How is your winter?

[ShmuBamboo]

Well, here at least they are not labeling these cold weather events due to polar vortex like last year. They are certainly polar cold weather being drawn down into the US and Europe, but seemingly for different reasons. The press and some universities here in the states are considering banning the use of the term polar vortex, because it is basically used for describing any cold weather system. Here in the PNW they are calling it the polar express. We have been on the western fringe of the real cold here this week, and we have gotten some east winds that got down to 18F. Nothing like least year where we were down to 7F, and this year has been a lot warmer here than last winter overall. October was a record high for the month since temperatures have been recorded here (120 years or so). No real damage to any of my boos, except my Jiuzhaigous. I think I will start a thread on them... no way they can go to -15F as the ABS SL says. I do not think they are really nitidas, or even Fargesias. They behave and grow more like Borindas.

[T9D]

It's been super warm this winter in Oregon. A couple weeks ago it was 58 degrees, when it's normally in the teens this time of year.

Except the two short polar vortexes we got. We got down to around 10 degrees for short periods. The first one was so sudden and such a huge fast drop that it fried the very late growth I had on most my bamboo. Some of it hadn't totally even leafed out yet. The culms on those are probably dead too I bet. The rest of the growth is fine and they mostly look green and healthy.

Decora
Rubro
Bissetii

Except one of the Rufa in a big pot got about half it's folliage fried. The other one right next to it didn't weird.

The 5 or so other types I have are in pots and inside for their first winter so doing fine.

It's going to be back in the 40's again today. That's crazy warm for right now.

[stevelau1911]

There hasn't been any very cold temperatures yet in my bamboo garden, but they are forecasting 3F(-16C) for next Wednesday. That alone should be capable of little to no damage since the soil shouldn't be frozen at all yet since it has been well above average in terms of overall temperatures heading into January. I believe if the real threat exists this winter, it would likely come some time in February if it ever gets cold enough to freeze the Great Lakes. If the Great Lakes is still more than 50% unfrozen, there should be enough of a buffer to prevent lows from getting way below 0F.

Aside from Atrovaginata, I have most of them more than 90% tarped anyways so we would need several weeks of brutally cold temperatures which hopefully won't happen. The forecasts seem to be pointing to relatively average temperatures this winter, so it may not even dip below 0F this winter. The coldest lows of the year usually happen from mid January through early March.

[T9D]

Forgot to mention. The rest of the bamboo in town got fried all the way around. Looks bad. Think it's all Golden bamboo. Don't know who was selling it or where they all got it but people need to research better on what to plant. One from last year that looks unattended was mostly dead from the last winter and never really came back. Might barely be hanging on. Maybe 8 feet tall. The neighbors down the street comes back ok every year but it's only like 6 feet tall. I think everyone in town is going to be jealous when I have green bamboo all year and it's 40 feet tall or more

I did find some spectabilis when I was walking around not long ago. Don't know how it's holding up though. Haven't been back there since. It's in a very narrow cramped area for privacy. Not very tall.

Oh geez and I forgot there is some pretty tall bamboo next to a commercial building that they put in already big as part of the landscaping. Doesn't look like it's shot up a lot if any culms though. Only seen it from far away while driving. I think I'll stop in and take a photo and ID it next time I'm driving by. Wonder what it is and if it will do well. Doesn't seem to be taking off. Thought I saw a few dead or fried culms even.

[stevelau1911]

One night at -9F with high winds, and that was enough to wipe out my atrovaginata. I think it can still releaf, but it definitely looks entirely leaf burned because the wind chills may have exceeded -30F on that night. This proves that the compost under there alone really doesn't help much in terms of keeping the leaves green, but it may still save good shoot buds for next spring.



Tying culms together did absolutely no good.

The only surviving leaves were the ones underneath the snow line.


Even the propinqua beijing test culms look completely fried, but luckily, atrovaginata is the only species that I did not tarp.


The parvifolia looks pretty good for the parts never exposed to wind so I think the wind chill must have played a big factor in wiping out culms on all groves that were exposed.




As expected, the moso bicolor with the greenhouse over it is immune to the winter winds, and even though the barrels can freeze over resulting in temperatures close to 0F, it's showing no signs of damage in there.






The barrels are frozen solid, but usually be February, the daylight gets stronger and stronger, making it more and more likely for the barrels to unfreeze with the increased greenhouse effect.

[T9D]

Ouch that's going to hurt.

So what do you plan on doing when all that other stuff eventually gets to big to tarp? Just going to have to let it fry every year or so and hope it lives enough to keep growing?

[stevelau1911]

It would still be possible to tarp part of the grove, or at least tie culms together, and attach christmas lights if I really wanted to protect. Atrovaginata is large enough so even if every culm got killed to the ground, it shouldn't really matter since it would recover 100% to what it was this year if not better anyways. It's the 2nd brutal winter in a row when the previous 5 winters were nowhere close to cold enough to do this.

I guess it is possible to keep edulis bicolor under a greenhouse for protection, but for all the other ones, they should be strong enough to regrow from damage every time if they are too big to tarp.

[oobmab]

Got down to 3F for one night. Can't remember if windy. Lot of leaf burn on my Pseudosasa Japonica. Also, some on my Nidularia (surprised about that).

[Rufledt]

I checked under my tarp today and found some damage. I put all of my planters in a pile over my bamboos in the ground, put a bunch of water jugs everywhere, covered it all in leaves and tarped it.

All my water jugs froze solid, decora looks like the leaves are all toast, S3 and prominens not looking great either, but not as bad, curling leaves but nothing looks burned yet. All 3 were recent additions. A new bisettii planted in exactly the same kind of wooden planters as prominens and S3 looks fine. 'Spectabilis' and 'harbin' look damage free, parvifolia also looks fine, all from a couple years ago and planted in the ground. Surprisingly a small potted japonica away from the water jugs has no curled leaves. Weird.

Next year I'll have to find another way to keep this stored... maybe set up an overwintering room in my garage and keep the soil from freezing in the planters?

It looks like wind blew a little of the leaf pile off of my nitidas, too, and the exposed parts look toast, completely leafless, maybe the culms too. Most of the plants are under the piles and those leaves look undamaged.

My big rhododendron along side of my house looks pretty droopy, too. The soil must be frozen right up to the foundation of the house. I guess that's what happens when we don't get snow cover!

[WestCountyBamboo]

Here in Northern California we are having a mild winter, minus the needed rain. We had one good storm and are at about half the usual rainfall. We had one week of temperatures around freezing, but since it has been low of 40 to 45F and highs around mid 60s with higher temps in the forecast. Our bamboo is shooting already, about 2 months earlier than usual. We greenhouse our more sensitive species, but it has not been so necessary this year so far. Hoping for rain.

[stevelau1911]

One good thing about tarps is that they can be further insulated by snow as long as the tarp does not stick out a lot. We only had 1 abnormally cold night so as long as another extreme subzero temperature is avoided, most of my bamboos should be mostly green when I untarp them in a couple months.

It looks like a cold winter, but not one with a polar vortex.

[mountainbamboonut]

Our winter in the lower sierra nevada mountains has been like spring time. it was in the 60's and sunny today. i am scared my boos will start shooting prematurely. i have high hopes for growth this season though.

[Rufledt]

Not fair!

Tomorrow is my last barely above freezing day for the foreseeable future. Just finished some additional winterizing that I should have done before winter started. Thawed all the frozen jugs, added more jugs and buckets and added some x-mas lights under there to see if that helps at all. Already quite a bit of damage to some plants, others look totally fine.

[Alan_L]

I...Atrovaginata is large enough so even if every culm got killed to the ground, it shouldn't really matter since it would recover 100% to what it was this year if not better anyways...

I doubt that this is what you'll see. I only have one year experience with a decent-sized Atro and cold, and that was last year when we hit -8F. Although the culms were not killed and they all leafed back out, there were only a few shoots. They seemed to be of comparable size to existing ones but they weren't bigger or taller, and if the grove had topkilled I would certainly not say that it would have been back to "100%" after that.