What do you get when you mix a running bamboo, a big rotten stump, an unseasonably mild day, and a heavy mattock?
You get a big pile of rhizomes:
An equally big pile of stump chunks:
Hands that remind you that you should have been wearing your padded gloves:
And a neighbor that is happy that not only will he not see bamboo shoots coming up in his yard in the spring, but the stump that he's talked about having removed is now almost completely gone.
(There were twin elm trees here, one on each side of the property line. I'd love my stump to be gone too, but it's a lot more solid than the rotten one was. Looks like I may be stuck with it for another year or more. Shoot.)
Many cold-hardy running bamboos will swell the shoot buds during fall (or maybe early winter). They'll remain dormant until the ground warms in the spring, when they will enlarge and emerge from the ground.
There are several on these Phyllostachys glauca 'Yunzhu' rhizomes, many of pretty decent size. I buried many of these in a thick layer of leaves. If they're still alive in the spring I'll probably use them as trade plants, pot them up, or give them away.
I'm not sure if I'll be keeping this bamboo, as it's not upright enough for my yard. I'll see what it does this year then decide. Maybe I'll have another bamboo removal project this summer.
Now where's that Neosporin for my blisters?
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So the rhizomes had crossed over into your neighbor's yard and took up residence in the rotten stump? This really is a riddle :-).
ReplyDeleteThose two stumps (one mine, one the neighbors) with their big roots have been interfering with my rhizome pruning every year. Some of the rhizomes were going through the stump, but many of them were just "normal" ones that I hadn't gotten around to pruning yet.
ReplyDeleteDo you think Glauca is worth collecting?
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure if it can make it up here if it leaf burns very badly down in Missouri. I'm guessing it probably leaf burns starting around +3F from what what I've read, and it usually gets down to around -2F on an average winter here.
Steve: it always leafs back out for me, even when it lost most of its leaves. The main problem I have with it is it's not upright enough. You're trying to grow Moso, and it's surely more cold-hardy than that.
ReplyDeleteI ended up digging up that moso which I showed top killed pictures of last spring and replacing it with moso bicolor which seems to be a bit hardier just because it's a division from an older plant instead of a seedling.
ReplyDeleteSounds like Glauca is just a couple degrees less hardy than Dulcis and might have a chance here. I'm not too concerned about it learning so it might be a good pickup.