2011

[bambambooboo]

Hey Bambam,

My understanding is that Phyllostachys bambusoides doesn't need a cold winter per se in order to grow. I don't know if you have ever considered this species but it is one of my favorites here in zone 8a. Just a thought.

Regards,
Mackell in DFW

Not familiar so did image search. Very nice. Thank you for suggestion. But I am trying to stick with clumpers and will give timor black, tropical black and golden hawaiian a chance to establish before giving up on them. If I have to go with runners in future years to approximate their color & size, I'm thinking just two so far, one of the blacks and a Robert Young which gets a good diameter. Otherwise I have clumpers Sunburst & Asian Lemon to work with.

I understand that some bamboo woudn't do so well in our humid summers but didn't realize some actually need the cold, which I guess makes sense. I'll see what tropicals I can establish here and then if I'm not satisfied I'll have to learn more about runners. I've got very nice draining sandy soil so digging for a barrier would not be terrible, just annoying and I'd rather keep maintenance at a minimum as I age.

[marcat]

BBBB try D minor Does real good here in texas hot summers with iffy freezes in winter. This year is mild but last year we had a hard feeze and it was fried to the ground but has recovered extreamly well.
MarCat

[marcat]

BBBB just thought of another the Chungi does real good in 9a and I hear the barbie chungi is good too don't have one yet. your Sunburst and Asian Lemon are good choices 9a.
You Florida guys are getting a nasty winter this year. Feel for you we had it last year (Knock on wood) here in Texas. We are in recovery this year.
MarCat

[bambambooboo]

BBBB try D minor Does real good here in texas hot summers with iffy freezes in winter. This year is mild but last year we had a hard feeze and it was fried to the ground but has recovered extreamly well.
MarCat

Yes, thank you. I've planted three angel mists since I moved here. Two will flank a tropical black if I can get the black established here. Glad to hear it has recovered even though badly damaged at first. I'm hoping to have similar luck with other tropicals. I started moving in just in time for last year's freeze. Planted Golden Hawaiian two weeks before those insane two weeks of cold. It got severely damaged but most all of it survived.

BBBB just thought of another the Chungi does real good in 9a and I hear the barbie chungi is good too don't have one yet. your Sunburst and Asian Lemon are good choices 9a.
You Florida guys are getting a nasty winter this year. Feel for you we had it last year (Knock on wood) here in Texas. We are in recovery this year.
MarCat

I brought some chungi with me. Had a stunning stand in south Florida. Was brutal getting divisions. Went through three or four chain saw blades. Only one clump survived the move but it is doing very well now, showing zero damage from what was just our coldest December in the recorded history of this area.

I considered barbie but I really prefer the big stuff.

My Sunburst did very well, even one sprout which stopped growing during the freeze has started growing again. The Asian Lemon got only slightly damaged, hardly worth mentioning.

Supposedly this December was colder here, on average, than last January. But last January we had more freezing nights than we had this December. I don't know the weather here well enough yet but I suspect the 10-hour freeze we had a few days back was pretty odd. Probably it was a good test of what will survive in the twilight zone.

[dudley]

Lako is my least cold hardy bamboo.
It has been pretty much top killed every year.
This year I will move it to a more sheltered location, but I do not have high hopes for it ever doing well here.

[bambambooboo]

I'm not sure what is meant by top kill. But if it means just the tops of the culms die or even if the entire culm dies but that the rhizome survives, I can be okay with that and will plant accordingly so that the area around them will have some "evergreen" bamboos also.

So far as I can tell, Bambusa lako survived better than Gigantochloa atroviolacea (tropical black) but tropical black is really hard for me to judge. Both lost all their leaves during the last two freezes. The tropical black has some definite culm damage but I do see some green still on some of the culms which were late to sprout. I don't know yet if they will leaf out. There is definitely more green on the lako, especially where it branches out from the culms, which gives me hope.

It is important to me to have black bamboo as I enjoy it so much. I've done an 80 ft line out back of tropical black alternating with Asian lemon. Up front I've got two Angle Mists which will flank a tropical black and I'm doing another section with two lakos flanking a Sunburst.

During the last 8 years, this area had two years with no freeze, three years with only one day of freeze each (and probably just for a few hours each time), one year with two nights of consecutive freezing, though 2009 had 4 freezes and 2010 was a rough year with 13 freezes and two of the coldest months in locally recorded history. So I'm hoping I'm good until the next 100-year event and at most I only need about half of those before I'm planted.

[marcat]

Looks like we will all get to test cold hardiness next week. they are predicting a major cold event of long duration.
MarCat

[Iowaboo]

looking at my bamboos, looks like I've already been testing cold hardiness all winter.