I need to destroy bamboo!! Please help!!

The neighbor planted bamboo. Which means I have bamboo. It's the stuff that grows obscenely tall extremely fast, with stalks up to 6" in diameter and over 30' in height. With all the wet weather we've been having, it can grow five feet in a week. It has roots like mountains of spaghetti. The clump is wrecking my chain link fence, the lawn guys can't get their mowers past it, and it's annoying for me to walk around them. I'm (comically) afraid it will decide to sent a shoot up through the cement foundation and spear me while I sleep, and legitimately afraid that the right hurricane winds will beat those stalks against the roof and destroy my house.

The neighbor is physically unable to deal with the overgrowth in the yard, and I have back issues that haven't incapacitated me (yet). They don't mind if my BF and I go ahead and chop back the stuff in their yard that eats our fence, but they don't want to admit the horrible choice they made for a shade plant and let us try to eradicate it. To them, it's spreading just the way they like it, sort of along their side of my fence.

WHAT can I do to control the growth on my side of the fence? Is there anything I can do to stealthily destroy it as completely as possible? I thought about "mulching" the clump with bags of rock salt, but that sounds a little insane. When I tried to start chopping and digging it out it just seemed to make things worse.

Puh, puh, puh puh-LEESE help!

Oh my!

That is nice bamboo. I like bamboo - in someone else's yard. I really enjoy sitting in the bamboo grove at Morikami gardens (here in Delray Beach) and listen to the wind rustle through the leaves; very peaceful.

Left to its own devices, it will become timber bamboo. I wouldn't salt the ground. Eradication it may not be an easy task. I would remove the chain link fence and hire a backhoe to dig up the whole clump, refill the hole with fresh soil, re-install the chain link fence and pray for the bamboo not to return. I would also burn the bamboo once you get it out of the ground and scatter the ashes in the ocean; a bit here and a bit there.

Best of luck with all that.
Sylvain.

It is timber bamboo. Its tough to control and tougher to get rid of. Hire someone to attack it with an axe or trencher. Dig down at least 3 feet (that's how far down the roots extend) and build some kind of barricade. Concrete would probably do it.

Aother solution is cutting it down to the ground with a chainsaw and not letting any shoots grow. Eventually, the roots become exhausted and the plant dies. The problem with this solution is that the neighbor wants to let his half of the bamboo continue to grow.

The less permanent, always going to have to deal with it fix is to chainsaw it off at the ground and don't let any shoots grow on your side. It won't stop it but maybe manage to control it.

I love bamboo also and that is an awesome plant but... The neighbor should have planted it a little farther from the fence.

Daisy

Thanks for the advice. Hiring a backhoe is probably the only way to get rid of the stuff, but it isn't the stealthy kill I was hoping for... :) The bamboo has its merits, but not when it's six feet from my house, and marching closer. It's a convenient material to use as a bed border, but that's as crafty as I've gotten with it.

Stealth factor: make a false bamboo trunk or two to hid the gaping hole your digging to get the root. Wait until dark, put on your headlamp, grab a sturdy shovel, ax etc...no noise making tools it will take more elbow grease but no noise to alert the neighbors that your removing the bamboo. When you're exhausted from the work, pull the faux bamboo over the hole you've spent hours digging.
Upon removing each piece of root/shoot place in the incinerator that your husband has secretly built in the basement just for this purpose. Put the ash in a clear container and set it where the live bamboo will sense it as a warning that it's next.
Once the roots on the neighbors side of your fence feels the distress of its roots being dug up, and burn....it will refuse to wander across to your property for fear of being dug up.
Or send the neighbors on a spa weekend, hire a backhoe, dig up all the bamboo, replacing it with PVC pipes that have been painted to look like bamboo.

Yeah, I like the PVC idea!

You guys are too funny. Remember to put on your stealthy Ninja gear. You could cut a few canes off a couple inches above the ground then paint them with full strength brush killer. The bamboo will slowly die and the neighbor will not be able to figure out what happened. I suspect it would not take out his whole bamboo patch, just the ones closest to the ones you paint.

Bamboo is nearly impossible to kill. She could probably cut it all down and spread 3 gallons of brush kill and barely discourage it!

That bamboo! Ct has it as invasive. Real dream- shoots up 10' away under foundations, roots get worse longer its left. Has Fl tagged it as invasive yet? It takes over waterways and clogs drains, must be incinerated as every grain of bamboo can possibly start a new shoot. The dirt even needs incinerated. As far as harvesting, there are probably people standing in line that would chop it for you. My neighbor did same thing- sniff, sniff, to have a view, its cut down, but walking the creek to her house pretty quickly. No easy solution.