Anyone know bamboo?

Someone told me you can just take bambo, cut it into single culms and then just plant them horizontally. Idea being the bamboo will grow new shoots from each node. If true what time of year do you think I should try that? I believe bambo only grows from a limited time each year.

Any comments?

A long time ago I remember reading that you needed a root division with at least two culms to propagate bamboo, I am not sure of that information being accurate though. I know many spread by root runners. To be honest, I'm not sure it would be worth the effort to propagate most bamboo (unless it's something really rare/expensive you can't get any other way) because it really can become invasive pretty quickly when established and it's not easy to dig up if you rid of it. I planted some p. aurea 3 years ago and it was pretty tidy until I noticed last fall that runners were creeping underground several feet from the plant (not close enough to notice it spreading until it was really hard to rip them out)and getting into some other beds. Looks great now but it has to go, I have a wooded area where it would look good, but I don't want it to defeat the native plants back there.

This bamboo will be used for a natural wall aorund 500 ft long. The kind of bamboo we want to use is a clumper so it wouldn't run all over the place. We don't want it to ever be ripped up or killed off but we do need to have it spread enough to become thick as a sound and visual barrier. This is for an area that SCE+G bushhogged under some power lines. We want to block out a small road as much as we can.

Clumper's are real slow, that's my only complaint with them. I put one in the ground the fall of 2007 and it's still not much bigger than it was then. I suspect it'll get going good this year, but they do take a looong time to get big (usually 4-5 years I think for several culms to appear). I wish there were more folks around here who grew the clumping type - could just dig a few pieces up and start them off bigger - everything you get online or in most garden shops is pretty small.

We're going to harvest the bamboo from some mature stands, it would be wildly expensive and take forever to buy little bamboo. Figure 500 ft to cover and we would be working with 10-15ft culms. 25 with 10 ft spaces in between should do it. 3-4 years and I think we would have a wall. BTW my friend saw them do this at a golf course and it worked well, that's where the idea came from. I'm not sure the name of the bamboo used but it's pretty common around here to use as a wall or a screen. Maybe 2 inches wide and 25-30 ft maxium height, evergreen with a good amount of leaves for a bamboo.

Hopefully we will find a golf course guy who knows how to do it. The bamboo is easy to find and we won't have a problem getting 25 or so for free. I just need to know if there are any tricks to doing this? Time of year etc.

sorry, don't know this. bamboo here is bad about becoming invasive.

Any running bamboo will go nuts given time. Clumping bamboo will spread out but at a slow rate, very controlable once it gets to the size you want. In fact clumping bamboo may actually stay in a smaller area then you would like.

Where are you getting such large pieces? Any suggestions on how I might some here in the Columbia area?

lol...guess it's tough to talk someone out of bamboo..so many people tried to talk me out of it and I wish I had listened. It is such an impressive sight to see a mature grove, though. I would suggest that you at least put a good barrier where you want it to eventually stop, red clay and drought didn't keep my clumper from getting carried away. You could always just experiment with a few culms yourself to try...

My clumper has been in the ground about 8 years and it is finally large enough to be a good screen. It has never run but from a 3 gallon pot the base has spread out to about 2'.

I know you can root cordylines by the horizontal method but I have never heard of Bamboo rooting that way. It would be cool if it worked. Why don't you call the Bamboo place in Savannah and ask.

I don't think you guys get what we're trying to do. There are barriers, a road on one side and a pond on the other. In between those two are tall pines and various other trees. We very much want that to fill in with bamboo so not a creature can get through it. All together we wouldn't mind running this bamboo down the road for a 1,000 ft or so. It is to block out lights, people, noise, whatever. This is not for looks but we think it will look good anyways. This is to grow as dense and tall as it wants. When it heads for the pond I think it's to over grown and shady for the bamboo to continue even if it does we are fine with that.

This is a neighborhood effort or at least my close neighbors. I have a source for the bamboo and the labor, I just need when is the best time of year to do it. Where they did it on a golf course they had the advantage of being able to heavily water the bamboo to get it going. We do not.

Tomorrow I'll be out taking some pictures so I'll get a picture of what I'm talking about.

This message was edited Mar 20, 2009 9:52 PM

Good idea with the bamboo forest idea. They would know for sure.

I am going to bury a culm today, just to see what happens.

The one bad part about my Bamboo is that it drapes over and we have to keep it tied up. That looks pretty tacky but it is 12' tall now and which makes it about 10' wide when it droops. Mine is an inexpensive NOID variety from Bakers but there are nicer clumper cultivars, like Alphonse Karr, that hold their shape better.

Here we go. To the left is a golf course and to the right is the power lines that got brushhogged under. Farther to the right is a natural buffer then a lagoon that backs up to my house. We want the bamboo to run right down under the power lines and out to the road if it will grow that far.

Here's the type of bamboo we want to use. Stays nice and green year round, height is good and it gets dense without being a runner.

Not sure if you googled "propagating bamboo" but here's one page I found. might want to be sure the type of bamboo you have can be propagated that way and be prepared to wait a year or so:
http://www.inbar.int/publication/txt/tr05/a5-2.htm

I understood what you're doing but the pictures are good. When the power co. hacks the bamboo it will help it spread. It will grow in shady/wet areas just fine, so you really should consider a barrier for the pond while you're waiting for it to fill in

if I were doing this I'd have a few different types, black bamboo is cool, and there are some native canes and fargesias that would behave well

I think I understand what you're trying to accomplish, Core, and I think it's neat! But you may be caught between a rock and a hard place. The clumpers spread too slow to accomplish your goal in your lifetime (unless you plant gazillion$ of them), and I'm totally with Tropicana on the runners. I grow some Alphonse Karr on the corner of my lot to block out the flashing red light of a range marker on the ICW, and the sound of traffic over the new, improved Limehouse Bridge. Planted a "big" (15 gal.) clump of Alphonse Karr 5 years ago, thinking it would take over the spot in no time. It didn't, despite loving care. So I added 2 more smaller clumps (2 gal.---those things are pricey!) to help build a sufficient screen . I'll try to get a picture of the size of the total "clump" tomorrow to give you a feel for spread rate of clumpers (or more correctly "Alphonse Karr")---but I think it's fairly representative of "clumper" spread rates in our clime.

I agree running bamboo would be a bad thing to unleash also if we had to buy 5 gallon pots of bamboo it would be costly.

What my neighbor claims is thats how they plant new bamboo on golf courses around here. Thought being gather up 25 or so culms with roots which we have sources for that. 25 at 10 feet long would cover 250 ft if layed end to end. Supposingly shoots will come up at each node. Once that happens I do wonder if it will spread fast enough??? This can be done over a few years or if we can get our hands on 100 culms that would give us 500 ft with two rows. How much bamboo we can get this year is up in the air but it is used a lot here for screens or natural fences.

Worse case is this ends in horible failure and we're out so time. One way or another we will trying to do this some time this year. Just need to nail down a few more facts.