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.

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.

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.

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.

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.)

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!

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.

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.)

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)