Tell me what you think of this.

http://www.care2.com/greenliving/5-reasons-not-to-plant-bamboo-in-your-yard.html

This is making me so angry

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Many of my local customers will think the same thing until they see how many running bamboos I have growing in the ground without any barriers and without any evidence of an attempt to control their spread. I left a comment on there to hopefully make a difference.

Anyone can write an article on something they have absolutely no experience on and haven't even done their research on and get people to believe them just because it is on the internet.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/31489820@N02/

http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/

Wow, what complete and utter bunk! Skewed facts served with a side of ignorance, what a farce! I love how the implication is made that bamboo can swallow you and your neighbors' yards at a rate of 3 feet per day!

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God Bless,

Matthew

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Genesis 2:8 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there He put the man whom He had formed.

It's not everywhere that a bamboo can grow over 3 feet per day.

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My bamboo ate my cats.

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David
San Francisco Bay Area
My zone info
My blog: Modernist Gardening

I have a problem where some of my running bamboos won't run at all which makes it very hard to get the grove effect, and it gets much harder to take divisions. I would be very happy if I can get 3 feet in a year of rhizome growth, which is possible with some species, but the less aggressive ones hardly spread at all.

Does anyone know if there's anything I can do other than keep them well watered to help these rhizomes grow more than a few inches?

I've tried ground plastics, I'm thinking about heating cables, but it seems like the whole area needs to get warmed so perhaps I'll have to put a whole heated greenhouse over the bamboo and hope it runs with the additional heat.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/31489820@N02/

http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/

What a coincidence, our cats eat the bamboo.

So is the cycle of life.

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."

We've been advising you for 2 years to stop messing with your young groves but you have been intent on doing experiments. Maybe, just maybe, if you stop messing around looking for rhizomes in the mulch, thinning too soon, & dividing young groves - at the wrong time of the year you'll get some accelerated growth. Maybe it will not help, perhaps your climate just is not conducive to rhizome growth but maybe we've been giving you good advice all along?

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Brad Salmon, zone 5b/6 Southern Indiana
Winters -20 to -25C. Summers 30 to 35C , humid. 115 cm annual precipitation, frost free from May through early October. 259.3 meters elevation. Growing 150+ species. http://www.needmorebamboo.com/

You can't take divisions and grow a grove at the same time.

Anytime you touch bamboo, other than taking out dead wood, you are slowing growth. Once it is big and you want to manicure it, it is not so noticeable, but I've become convinced it needs at least three years of peace and quiet to start. Mine are responding well to that thought - I used to manage too much.

Actually the ones I've been messing with all along are the ones that seem to have at least some spread such as the parvifolia, bissetii and rubro. For example I've taken nearly 30 divisions off parvifolia, but it's still making near 30 inch long rhizomes this year. I only take divisions off those because I know they will still make progress regardless.

Some of the ones that I have yet to get divisions are the ones that are refusing to grove out. Maybe I simply need more aggressive boos around here for what I need. For example, dulcis has made under 10 culms in 3 growing seasons, and made next to no spread while moso bicolor has produced 1 single rhizome which only appears to be a few inches long. Maybe there's more going on underneath that I'm not aware of or some of these species just don't spread very fast.

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/31489820@N02/

http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/

some of them probably will just die slow deaths and some you'll end up pulling out or having others overtake them. I still have dulcis, who knows why, I had to move it away from the nuda overtaking it, I give it another 5 years until I can cross that one off my list because not bothering moving it again.

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Lance Kleckner
http://www.bigfootwillow.com

I've only gotten one shoot from my dulcis in the past two years, but the shoot produced a culm about 16 feet tall.

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Southern Indiana. Theoretically the same climate as 'needmore' & 'Eastlandia'.
My Bamboo List.

"Take Dog apart. Disinfect. Reassemble."

on the OP this article is typically misleading. almost any tree can do more damage than bamboo. i have never had bamboo ruin my storm drains for example, but you dont see warnings about japanese maples. i have been trying hard to dispel misinformation like this about bamboo but it's hard to compete with the willfully ignorant. herbicides? really? why not just dig it up!

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-alan in seattle
zone8

Well reading the article right away one can tell how misinformed she is and that she cannot even interpret what she herself reads. In the second paragraph she states Ted Jordan Meredith, author of Bamboo for Gardens, notes that some bamboo species can grow more than three feet per day. She makes the assumption that this is the spread rate, when in fact we here all know it references how fast some grow skyward.

Oh well, there will always be those that are against the world's most useful plant...

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Someday maybe I'll find a bamboo my wife likes...in the meantime I'll keep planting more!

My Bamboo Pics
Bamboo Propagation Info