UNFORTUNATE FACTS ABOUT BAMBOO

 

        Have you seen nurseries selling pots with beautiful huge thick canes of bamboo, often Bambusa vulgaris vittata, which mostly croaked before you even bought them?  Perhaps they died on the way to the cash register? 

Because they were just rooted canes with no new growth, which does not work in dry climates.

Well, there is something else to NOT DO.

It is a simple thing. 

I will explain.

One of the ways of transplanting bamboo, which does not work well  is to dig up a wonderful big chunk of it, including roots and soil, and plunk it down in a hole someplace else, quite possibly your own garden.

 

           Such plants inevitably go downhill for a while, before a slow and pitiful recovery. a percentage of them just croak, and that's the way it is, it is an immutable law of nature.   We are sorry that this is so. Life would be simpler if it were not this way. ALAS! and BOO HOO!  but the truth is, unless your bamboo has spent a season or so growing in a container, it is not going to perform well for you when it is transplanted to your own personal hole in the ground.

 

        We dig and containerize bamboo all the time, it is how we get it to be "containerized". there is a rate of loss,  even after a ritual involving severe  top pruning  plus  time spent in an intensive care unit, while the freshly dug plant recovers....it is a big deal. We have attempted many times to somehow get round this problem, but, it is just not fair to our customers. We will probably continue to try it for ourselves, and sometimes it is the only opportunity for us to get some more bamboo, but we are accustomed to accept a rate of loss from transplanting, which is really a form of propagating. YOU, Dear Customer, should not have to suffer this rate of loss.

 

        Our lives would be much easier if we could just grow the stuff in our ground and dig it up for you. We would be wealthy and have SPARE TIME.  Alas.

        If you live in a place with a lot of rain  AND  humidity, DO NOT READ THIS!!!!! This is special information for Southern Californians!

       

        OK, the next truth is that a big plant, when moved, after being dug up, reverts to juvenile growth in the course of recovery. it does not skip  merrily along to a normal next season of growth and put up large canes. Sometimes there is no way around this...and it is not a disaster, but it may be disappointing. the better way is to get a container- grown plant and stick it in the ground and stand back as it experiences the joy of liberation  in its next season of growth, by punching big star shaped holes in the ground and cranking out BIGGER canes than what you originally planted. Now, that's bamboo!