Can Do Bamboo

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GETTING BAMBOO

With more than 90 bamboo nurseries operating nationwide, it's easy to purchase bamboo starter plants in small quantities. For farm-scale quantities, you'll have to contract with one or more nurseries well in advance of your desired planting date.

For establishing a farm grove, a small healthy potted bamboo is superior to a large bamboo freshly dug from the ground. The small potted bamboo will send up larger shoots the next growing season. The large, transplanted bamboo will send up small shoots the next growing season - assuming you have the time to stake it and water it constantly for the first few weeks after planting.

While it's true that if you call around, put ads in the paper and get in on the bamboo network you can often find bamboo free for the digging, remember that everything has its price:

A) Spread mulch outside root ball.
B) After first season, place deep mulch well outside drip line.
C) Shaded area is the growth from the first season, while the white area marks the new canes from the second growing season.
D) In year three, remove all or most canes from first season.
E) Rhizomes have spread and matured so new canes arise well outside the original root ball. Thin so that the bamboo shades its culms and the ground while its leaves and branches receive sunlight. F) A mature grove. Continue to thin for best leaf and branch sunlight.

PLANTING BAMBOO

Once you've acquired your bamboo, you'll need to get it in the ground.

1. Place the root ball at the same level it was when dug from the ground or pot. Do not add soil on top of the root ball. Bamboo rhizomes and roots are extremely sensitive to changes in their position relative to the surface of the ground. Planting deep is the main cause for lack of growth of transplanted bamboo in the Pacific Northwest. Usually people plant deep to prevent the bamboo from blowing over. If there is any chance of this, stake the plant but do not bury the root ball.

2. Make a dam around the planting hole, well beyond the root ball, to hold water. If the plant is on a slope, make a dam below but not above the plant. You want to catch rainwater, not divert it. Water deeply and thoroughly by filling the catchment several times after backfilling the hole. This settles the soil around the root ball. Add more soil if needed. Try to saturate the surrounding soil so that it keeps the root ball moist until the bamboo can spread its roots into the new soil.

3. Beyond the root ball and its catchment area, make a doughnut of deep mulch measuring a few to many feet wide. Deep mulch controls weeds and encourages the bamboo to spread. Rhizomes and feeder roots will spread eagerly into the moist soil below the mulch and especially up into the mulch itself.

4. Mulch the top of the root ball very lightly. Too much mulch rots rhizomes and allows rodents to nest. Do not let mulch touch culms, as rodents will hide in it and eat culms and new shoots. Conversely, too little mulch bares the soil and allows overheating and the germina tion of weed seeds. Instead of mulch, some tree planters use a circle of brown paper with a cutout for the trunk. The paper shades the ground to prevent weed seeds from germinating. A paper mulch can easily be adapted to new bamboo plantings. Cover the outside edge of the paper with mulch to hold it in place. Make the above recommended doughnut of thick mulch outside the paper.

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