Dont be 'bamboo'zled

Hagar

Hagar

Hagar

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Joined
1 Mar 2010
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Location
Sunny Cheshire
www.theguardian.com

The big British bamboo crisis: ‘It invaded my beautiful home’

The plant can punch through paving stones, asphalt and even the foundations of your house. In one case, the bill for damage reached £100,000. So why does this problem just keep on growing?
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com

Buying a house or concerned about creeper coming under your fence? It could be much worse. I noticed a roaring sale in bamboo plants at our local supermarket a while ago. Surely buying an invasive plant species you should only buy from a reputable source like a garden centre asking how fast does this plant grow? Otherwise every shrubbery could soon come with a lost Japanese soldier.
 
There's two types of bamboo and they're not identified and differentiated properly for sale, which is dumb.

We've got some nice clump forming bamboo that hasn't spread more than 30cm in almost 10 years.

Bamboo with running rhizomes are frequently sold alongside these and that's the source of the problem.
 
These are relatively easy to control if you do a bit of research. Let them sprout to near full height, cut them before they form leaves. Repeat once or twice and the root will be depleted of energy to form new shoots.
 
Mate at work has bamboo, it's now an endless task cutting it back.

Why people plant bamboo is beyond me, looks meh at best.
 
alchal said:
Why people plant bamboo is beyond me, looks meh at best.
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It's a quick win for privacy, especially in new build areas where quite often you can see straight into other peoples living rooms/kitchens etc. There's not much else that grows as tall as bamboo does in little time, and it doesn't particularly need anything special doing for it to grow. We left it when we moved in while the trees were growing, now they provide the cover we're looking for the bamboo is coming out.
 
Blackjack Davy said:
Yeah. This is not Japanese Knotweed (and I know places with JK in the district the owners are oblivious)
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It's not, but it will be. It's the same family of plants and is incredibly hard to get rid of. They've been talking about it for a while now and putting it on the invasive list...

Just never plant it - put it in pots and it's (usually) fine!
 
Bah we've got bamboo in our garden (previous owners, not planted by us). I was wondering how you control it, on moving in back in winter, it was just a very square hedge so to speak. Now there's 3 to 4 large shoots that have grown insanely quick this spring.

So as one poster said above, we just cut these back? Back down to soil level?
 
Mekrel said:
So as one poster said above, we just cut these back? Back down to soil level?
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Way I've been doing it is to cut it right to the base, if the ground is dry then water it heavily well in advance. Then just dig it out, will need to be about half a foot deep. It'll be heavy to lift out due to the soil so use a hose pipe or pressure washer to remove the soil from the roots.
 
ChrisD. said:
Way I've been doing it is to cut it right to the base, if the ground is dry then water it heavily well in advance. Then just dig it out, will need to be about half a foot deep. It'll be heavy to lift out due to the soil so use a hose pipe or pressure washer to remove the soil from the roots.
Click to expand...

Is that just to maintain it, rather than trying to get rid of it?

This is what it looks like now:

how to upload pictures on internet
 
Bamboo's my backup plan for the post-apocalyptic economy. Fast growing, infinitely useful canes, licence to print post-apocalyptic bottle caps if you ask me. But until then, mine all live in huge pots. I have my eye on a not so nearby neighbour's though, which is the thirty foot high variety I covet but daren't plant! Now *those* are useful canes. Could rebuild the knackered conservatory with those! Very badly, admittedly, but cheaper materials than Wickes.
 
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