A taste of bamboo cleanup

There is much bamboo work to do this spring. Much is normal maintenance: pruning, cleaning. The dry fall and harsh winter have created an extra amount of damage that needs to be removed too, but I also skipped some tasks the last year or two and am paying for it now -- mainly rhizome pruning and therefore having to wrangle a few back under control.

So today just a taste, with some before and after photos. Starting with this vignette from the back garden, where it's difficult to know exactly what's going on here because it's so overgrown.

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No freedom for cup plant

Hello cup plant (Silphium perfoliatum), my big native beauty!

You're sort of an early one in my garden, emerging vigorously and almost crowding yourself out.

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Mid-Spring Blooms

I am not the biggest fan of the early spring blooms: daffodils and the like. But those later spring flowers... I love them! I guess these are mid-spring blooms?

Here's a little sampling of a few of the nicest in my garden right now.

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What do you see?

This is the view of my neighbor's house from my driveway. Why am I showing you this?

No, it's not to show a clean, more traditional garden space -- in sharp contrast to my own. It's to show you something much more interesting.

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Looking good? Look again.

Ah, beautiful bamboo culms:

Looks so good, such a pretty sight at any time of year. (This is Phyllostachys aureosulcata 'Spectabilis', showing off its characteristic yellow and green striping.)

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Making it through Winter

Yes, it seems like we've made it through another winter, but with that title I'm not talking about myself.

I'm talking about my Pachypodium lamerei: it has managed to keep a leaf, and I'm just about ready to move it back outside!

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Cold, cold Spring

We should be deep into Spring by now...

...but the cold just won't stay away! Some nice warm days (we hit 82ºF/28ºC the other day!) sandwiched between cold ones makes this an unusual Spring, at least compared to the last several years.

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Bamboo damage, winter 2017-2018

As I hinted at earlier this week, it's time to take a look at the bamboos and survey the damage that winter has dealt to them. If you prefer seeing healthy, green bamboos (as I do) with little evidence of winter's wrath, then you should look at the before photos I took in December. What comes next won't be pretty.

This is a look along my driveway. Indocalamus longiauritus, in front, usually shows almost no damage. The greenest clump is Sasa oshidensis, but even it has significant burning.

(Note that I took all of these photos on March 19. Things look a little worse now.)

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Bamboo Peek

So it looks like I'll be doing quite a bit of finger crossing in the next few weeks...

...as most of the bamboos are looking a bit fried. (More than a bit really)

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