It seems my Borinda fungosa seedling has some serious problems. It has two stems, and another shoot just emerged. Original culm started acting strange and at one point it stopped growing completely for a few days, after that it continued, but leaf was deformed and couldn't unfold as it should. After that new leaf appeared, but now I've seen it's even worst than one before, I guess it won't unfold at all. I saw there's another leaf growing in it, so I "rescued" it out of the death grip of latest crippled one. I guess I'll see how it grows, I hope everything will be normal, because this time, I opened leaf myself and new leaf isn't getting blocked.

Other problem on the same plant - its first shoot is fragile leaf that is tearing apart by itself. Both pictures included. Any help would be extremely appreciated!

When the leaf of original culm already had problems, shoot made perfectly healthy leaf. Now it started to shoot from second culm and almost instantly I noticed it's not doing very well.

Thank you for the help in advance!

Regards

Do not know boo seedlings much but from my other plant experience it sounds like a nutrient problem. Which nutrient I do not know try a mild lawn fert and see what happens.
MarCat

Yes, or some half-strength miracle-gro.

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Alan.
My blog: It's not work, it's gardening!

I watered it with mild 8-4-4 fertilizer yesterday evening. It also have many microelements that might be needed. The tearing leaf should unfold today or tomorrow, I'll see how it's holding. New leaf that is growing above "the wrinkled one" looks better than one before. Perhaps culm is deformed at one point, and because of that, growing leaves get damaget when they grow. Thank you for the feedback! If things won't change, I guess I'll take some soil from my garden and transplant it into larger pot.

I wouldn't use straight garden soil in a pot for a plant that is so small! Unless your soil is very loose with lots of organic matter, you should use a potting mix for the potted plants. Garden soil in pots gets compacted very quickly.

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Alan.
My blog: It's not work, it's gardening!

Alan, can lack of nutrients appear when bamboo starts shooting and takes most of its energy into new shoot? I ask that, because today I noticed something and I think there may be 2 shoots at the same time. I don't think shooting can be a problem for bamboo, but it does look like that. I've used mild fertilizer like a week ago.

Here's a picture of what I think could be 2 shoots.



About garden soil, I usually mix it with potting soil and compost. The main problem can be size of container. I noticed root coming out of drainage holes on the bottom. It was quite thick too, thicker than I thought roots at this stage are! Almost the size of first culm. It is white and it's clumping bamboo so it's not runner.

I haven't grown more than a few bamboo from seed so I'm not really an expert, but I do know that they always get to a point that they need some fertilizer. They don't need too much when they're that small though. If things are starting to brown up, that could be too much water.

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Alan.
My blog: It's not work, it's gardening!

It seems that both leaves are getting better. There are two shoots, they actually started on the same day, tip of their leaf blade is at exactly the same height. They are both around an inch tall now and they seem to be growing fast. I watered whole pot yesterday and after half an hour, removed excess water from the bottom. There's quite a lot of bark in the soil, if I would water too much it would soon leave drainage holes on the bottom. I'll see how everything develops, today they look great. None of leaf spears are wrinkled, none of them is showing any cracks like before. Since I fertilize on regular basis and I haven't seen this problem before, two shoots must be the cause. I'll have to start adding fertilizer more often I guess.

Thanks for all the help!

This evening new shoot became visible. It's shooting like crazy. I doubt it would do that if it would have nutrition problems. I have no idea what made it shoot so much, I really didn't expect such a small plant grow with such vigor. Today it's only 50 days old.


Leaves that were making me worried are growing perfectly again. I guess this little plant just calls for attention .

Seedlings need leaves, so they keep producing new shoots. You'll get more too I think.

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Alan.
My blog: It's not work, it's gardening!

I don't think there is real problem with that little bamboo,

the hard thing about such little plant is to keep the soil humid but not too much

I do not think fertilizer is a issue for now,

ph

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This little bamboo shooted 3 weeks after it germinated. It only had 3 leafs back then, I think it just likes to shoot, it was born shooter.

All three new shoots are growing extremely fast. Well, the smallest one is stil tiny, but it doubled it's size so it's good. I'll post pictures of leafs that were bugging me. It can be seen, that new leafs are getting better. The one on original culm is still not growing perfectly straight, because there might be some stem deformation involved, but when I compare it to previous leaf... well it's looking 100% better! Previous two leafs are turned away from stem, because they haven't unfolded correctly (You can see them on first picture).

The second picture shows how the leaf started to crack at one point and then after shoots came out and I used fertilizer, it went back to normal. I guess I'll never know what caused that. I will however, not panic if that happens again.

Third picture just for comparison how much new shoots grew in one day. One of the bigger shoots is clearly going to be noticeably larger. It grows out of previous culm's sheat. Both first leaves will be nearly twice as long as on first shoot.







Phillippe, that's why I used quite large pot for only one seedling. It can hold much more water and since it's well drained, there's no real danger of overwatering. I'll keep on using mild concentrations of water soluble fertilizer, rich on nitrogen. Seedling seem to be growing fast and some extra food won't hurt it.