Question about bamboo

[drakkensdottir]

Okay, hubby and I are looking at a small house on a good-sized lot. The backyard has been completely overrun by bamboo. This stuff is 25' tall if it's an inch. I know that it'll be a ton of work to clear it out, but does anyone have any suggestions about what to do with it? Can you eat it? Burn it in the fireplace? Process it yourself somehow for household uses?

Just a little clueless here....

Thanks.
Drak

[Kmac15]

I am jealous, you cannot get that stuff now because(surprise)it is now considered a noxious weed that cannot be controled (bet you did not know that)
I wanted some so I could use it for frames for my vines in the garden, railings for my porch, weave for a screen for my roses to climb, make a ladder for my chickens to roost, I could so go on sigh sigh

[PD-Riverman]

Originally Posted by drakkensdottir

Okay, hubby and I are looking at a small house on a good-sized lot. The backyard has been completely overrun by bamboo. This stuff is 25' tall if it's an inch. I know that it'll be a ton of work to clear it out, but does anyone have any suggestions about what to do with it? Can you eat it? Burn it in the fireplace? Process it yourself somehow for household uses?

Just a little clueless here....

Thanks.
Drak

There are Alot of things you can use this on/for/etc. Getting rid of it would not be easy, doing it by hand. I would get a back hoe and get it to dig up ALL root mass, if you don't, it will just grow back. If I was close I sure would help you dig some of it up, To get a Load, I would Love to have about a acre growing on my place!!

[holleegee]

you can eat some of it, but only the new shoots.

[bill not in oh]

I actually did some research on this for a friend of mine a few years ago. All bamboo (there are over 2000 varieties) fall into one of two basic categories - clumping (good) and running (bad if you have small areas to grow it). The running varieties (most of the varieties) produce new culms (stalks) from rhizomes so all the stalks you see are actually one giant plant. These rhizomes are tenacious. Botany 101 comes into play - if the plant has no leaves, it can't photosynthesize to supply nutrients to the roots (rhizomes). So cut it down at or beneath the soil level, then fertilize and water it well. The mother plant will reward you with an incredible stand of new culms which you will immediately murder by mowing or cutting off with pruners. Repeat this process for 3-5 years RELIGIOUSLY and the rhizome will eventually starve to death and rot away. At some point you may notice that the regrowth is significantly less vigorous than before. If at that time you fertilize with a very high nitrogen fertilizer (16-0-0) you will probably put it out of its misery.

Side note: As already mentioned, many varieties of bamboo are highly coveted and in great demand. Black bamboo is one of the species that have great value as an ornamental and other reasons. If you have a high-value species, you might want to consider harvesting and selling some of the rhizomes. Pretty much any piece of root that you can dig up will propagate a child plant - then it's someone else's problem. LOL I would suggest that Kmac15 is correct concerning its classification as a noxious weed that you carefully research CURRENT state by state status of the plant's classification prior to selling any - at least in those states that actually do prohibit the intentional propagation. I have no information to share regarding this, however I suspect that noxious weed status would be limited to specific varieties or at the very least to the running classification.

Good luck - they are very persistent and resilient critters... you just have to be more persistent.

PS: Hiring a backhoe is not a good option for eliminating the plant. The chance of getting ALL of the root is slim to nil. What you then end up with is many individual plants instead of one and you'll have to use the same techniques anyway. Also when I did the research on this there were no herbicides that were very effective in controlling damboo....

[diane]

My son and his wife cleared a back yard overgrown with bamboo and used it for fence, trellises, furniture and all sorts of things. If you keep it cut down and each time you cut it, spray that cut with Roundup, it will die faster.

[snv1492]

Originally Posted by drakkensdottir

Okay, hubby and I are looking at a small house on a good-sized lot. The backyard has been completely overrun by bamboo. This stuff is 25' tall if it's an inch. I know that it'll be a ton of work to clear it out, but does anyone have any suggestions about what to do with it? Can you eat it? Burn it in the fireplace? Process it yourself somehow for household uses?
Drak

You can build just about any structure you might need out of it. It has a tensile strength greater than steal and is more flexible than wood. 25' is some good length for just about any homestead building project. They still use it for bridges in parts of Asia, and while they don't build skyscrapers out of it, they do build the scaffolding out of them that go upward of 20 floors.

It's an ideal building material if you can get it passed the building inspector. I'd build a whole house out of it if I could.

[BlueLion]

When you put roundup on the cuts make sure you do it with in a few seconds of cutting. The sap withdrawing will draw the roundup down into the plant making it more effective.

[scorpian5]

just spray the leaves of the plant with roundup they take it in.

[brreitsma]

I don't know about all bamboo breeds but some bamboo can make great furniture.

[pixelphotograph]

makes great cane poles for fishing and good bean poles for the garden.
also good for staking small saplings and trees.

[FourDeuce]

I grow bamboo on my property. I have 8 varieties now. You might check out the American Bamboo Society at www.abs.org Growing bamboo can be an addictive hobby, though. Some people collect different varieties and plant them just to watch them grow. You can also use them for building things, for crafts(baskets, kites, flutes, lots of other stuff).
I like the sound the wind makes when it blows through a bamboo grove. That's tranquility. :baby04: It also makes a good privacy screen if you need to block something off.
Getting rid of it is quite a challenge once it becomes established, though. It isn't quite as tough to kill as some people think it is. It doesn't grow from ANY little piece of root cutting, but the roots are very persistent once it settles in.

[Windy in Kansas]

Originally Posted by Kmac15

I am jealous, you cannot get that stuff now because(surprise)it is now considered a noxious weed that cannot be controled (bet you did not know that)
I wanted some so I could use it for frames for my vines in the garden, railings for my porch, weave for a screen for my roses to climb, make a ladder for my chickens to roost, I could so go on sigh sigh

Are you sure that it is a noxious weed in South Carolina? It doesn't seem to be on the list.
http://plants.usda.gov/java/noxious?...e&statefips=45

[Silvercreek Farmer]

Just cut it back to a reasonable size patch, then, every spring when it sends up new shoots, kick them over while they are still soft, this will stop forward progression and give you some wonderful stir-fry!

[momlaffsalot]

I know it can get out of control, but I would still LOVE to have access to good bamboo. Can one make any decent money growing it here? Is there a market?

[TedH71]

FourDeuce,

You had it wrong. The website address is: www.americanbamboo.org/

[mistletoad]

There are a few people around here that advertise on Cragislist - free bamboo to anyone who goes and cuts it. Works great - we get free bamboo for all our projects and they get to reclaim their yard without all the hard work. Another person cuts theirs and offers it for $1 per pole.

[FourDeuce]

Originally Posted by TedH71

FourDeuce,

You had it wrong. The website address is: www.americanbamboo.org/

Sorry, hadn't visited there in a while. I've been working on building a collection of books. There are some expensive books on bamboo out there. Some I've been looking at are over $300(used).

[FourDeuce]

Originally Posted by Matthew Lindsay

Just cut it back to a reasonable size patch, then, every spring when it sends up new shoots, kick them over while they are still soft, this will stop forward progression and give you some wonderful stir-fry!

Kicking over the new shoots will slow down the progress(it does hurt the growing shoots and stops them from growing THERE), but it doesn't kill the underground runners. The only way to stop those runners is to put a barrier in their way and to watch them, because if they are growing underground and come to a barrier, the runners will often try to go around it(or over it).

[Freeholder]

You should do some research before eating any of your bamboo shoots, because I don't think all of them are edible. It's been a while since I read about them, but I'm pretty sure there are a few edible varieties, and some that aren't.

And I'm another one that would love to have a chunk of that bamboo forest!

Kathleen