Garden

[DowntonAbbey]

When I moved to my latest place last year a lady that lived here for 15 years planted bamboo and it was gorgeous last year and it was all green in one area in a corner of my patio.......well, I did water it and so this winter it went gray and now there are gray shoots or brown shoots the old ones and from the ground are coming up new stripped bamboo and they are beautiful and some of the old bamboo is like I said a brown color and some of them have green so I have not bothred them but wondering it the ones that are all brown and just break off do I cut those down to the bottom and just let the new ones grow?  Do you know why those turned brown as my lanlord said it has been beautiful for 10 plus years but I watered it today and just thinking to wait and see what the brown bamboo does and let the new bamboo come up???  Does anyone know about bamboo and what would you do?  I guess these new shoots are coming just from the ground not from a bamboo that is brown. It has kind of circled around the old bamboo.

[Kachina624]

@DowntonAbbey  Google is your friend.  I'm sure there's a wealth of information about bamboo online, more than anyone here could give you. 

[Desertdi]

The old brown ones should come up easily if you just pull on the stalk.

[gardenman]

Bamboo is one of those plants that I've never been brave enough to plant. I've heard too many horror stories of it trying to take over the world. I think it's a gorgeous plant and I think of all of the things I could do with bamboo, but I've dealt with a few invasive plants in my life and the problems they caused me make me leery of trying anything else invasive.

[Icegoddess]

@gardenman, I am one of those continually fighting my neighbor's bamboo that is planted right up against the fence row.  It's a running bamboo vs clumping, so it sends out long runners underground which then pop up far from the mother plant.  Luckily, that are of the yard is an unused part of our yard, but I don't want it taking over there, so every spring I have to start looking for those darn shoots and then I try to dig up as much of the runner as possible because the runner will put out more shoots.  You can dig it up and just plant parts of the runner and start new plants.  Ugh!  My understanding is you need to plant a barrier at least 2 feet deep to stop running bamboo.  That ain't happening in my clay and rock soil.

[lulu2]

Bamboo is almost impossible to kill.  Break off the old brown stalks so it looks better.  I would not water it as it will take over everything and anything without any outside help.

In our son's development, they are not allowed to plant bamboo because it is so invasive.

[RedTop]

I would not be encouraging this plant to grow.   

[granny me]

Bamboo and honeysuckle both seem like great ideas but turn out to be horrible. They both invade everything and it is impossible to kill out.

[Kachina624]

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@Icegoddess wrote:

@gardenman, I am one of those continually fighting my neighbor's bamboo that is planted right up against the fence row.  It's a running bamboo vs clumping, so it sends out long runners underground which then pop up far from the mother plant.  Luckily, that are of the yard is an unused part of our yard, but I don't want it taking over there, so every spring I have to start looking for those darn shoots and then I try to dig up as much of the runner as possible because the runner will put out more shoots.  You can dig it up and just plant parts of the runner and start new plants.  Ugh!  My understanding is you need to plant a barrier at least 2 feet deep to stop running bamboo.  That ain't happening in my clay and rock soil.

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@Icegoddess  Sounds exactly like trumpet vine. 

[gardenman]

About the only way I'd plant bamboo these days would be if I bought a house with an old in ground pool that I'd be filling in. I might then put a good pond liner in to protect the concrete from the bamboo roots, or spray it with polyurea to form an impenetrable barrier, and then fill it to within a foot of the top and use it as a giant bamboo planter. Even then I'd be a bit nervous. Bambo shoots are tough little dudes that can push their way through things that seem impenetrable.

About ten years ago I started to hear whispers that some of the clump forming bamboo wasn't really clump forming bamboo over the long term. It would grow in clumps for five years, ten years, twenty years or more, then suddenly start sending out runners and spreading like wild. That pretty much convinced me that even the clump forming bamboo was a bad idea. It's just too scary a plant for me to deal with. I love the idea of all of the things I could do with bamboo, but the risks far outweigh the benefits to me.