Hydroponic

Document your results with different mulches, seeds, mutations, TC or other experiments.

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Ophiuchus
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Bamboo Society Membership: ABS - America
Location: Magnolia Springs, Al Zone 8b
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Hydroponic

Post by Ophiuchus »

Hello My fellow bamboo enthusiasts,

I've read many of your posts, but I did not find any that had success or failure stories concerning hydroponics as a means to root the branches or culms of the mother plant and then transplant to soil. I would imagine a constant flow of mineral enriched water over the root would be just like submerging in a cup of water that eventually would cause the boo to rot.

I was just curious if the hydroponic system would be successful if set on a timer to keep the medium moist, but not water logged.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
Tarzanus
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Location: Ljubljana, Slovenia

Re: Hydroponic

Post by Tarzanus »

I think it's worth trying. I don't have an equipment to try hydroponic growing, but I did notice that bamboos actually like to have roots submerged in nutrient rich water.

That's one of the early photos, the roots actually grew into thick mesh of roots. I could not untangle the whole thing, so I just cut off the plastic pot and some roots to get the plastic out and up-pot it in the spring. It was growing faster and greener than any of my previous bamboo seedlings.
Image

I've been writing regularly about it, photo is from this post though. At the moment it looks a bit scorched. :mrgreen:


Regarding bamboo... the roots can be submerged as long as the water level is not too high. as soon as the water level touched the soil level of the pot, the water got sucked upwards and the peat based soil became too wet. Soon, the roots died off, rhizomes started rotting, whole plant declined. While the water level was below the height of the pot, there was a layer of air between the soil and nutrient rich water (runoff water from my watering) which promoted root growth into the water. There was no rotting, except when the roots dried too much on couple occations. If you checked my blog, you can see I've kept my seedlings under bright LED grow light and they got large for their containers, too large actually, which ment they needed to be watered at least once daily, I could water them twice daily and discover them almost dry the following morning.

In case you do try, keep us informed. :)
Ophiuchus
Posts: 132
Joined: Fri Feb 12, 2016 9:06 pm
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Bamboo Society Membership: ABS - America
Location: Magnolia Springs, Al Zone 8b
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Re: Hydroponic

Post by Ophiuchus »

Thanks for the reply. I would love to discover a means of propagation that would root young branches into plantable specimens. It would save me a fortune buying 3 gallon plants. I'll keep you posted.
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