Rhizomes Take to the Sky
2006.08.17
I saw that there are weeds coming up in the bamboo planting bed, so while I was letting the soaker hose run this evening, I went along and pulled weeds and roughed up the soil with a hand cultivator.
While I was doing that, I was surprised to come across some new bamboo shoots peeking out of the ground. I never expected anything to come up this late in the year… Bamboo Garden’s website says Yellow Groove Bamboo usually starts shooting in February, and bamboos in general grow new culms in spring and early summer. So I don’t know what to make of this. There are three shoots near one of the plants, and then one near the next plant. I think this is all from one of the encircled rhizomes that we untangled and then tried to lay out straight.
2006.08.20
Well, they’re getting taller, and more have appeared.
Meanwhile, while most of the bamboo plants I bought have been doing well, this one has suffered from the beginning. On all the plants, the leaves start to curl when they’re not getting enough water. But after I give them a good drink, then they unfurl and seem ok. This one has looked sickly for quite a while now, I’m not sure what the problem is.
2006.08.23
I emailed Bamboo Garden the other day. Amber says that it’s not that unusual to have some shoots come up in the late summer, but they will be small; the real growth happens in the spring. She also said it’s likely that these are rhizomes that have found the air. They tend to be smaller as well, and will always remain droopy. So I can cut those off or leave them, it doesn’t matter. So far, it’s hard to tell, one is definitely coming out of the ground at an angle (a sure sign it is a lost and confused rhizome), but the rest seem pretty straight so far.
The plant that’s not doing so well, she thought we probably traumatized it in the planting process. She said with bamboo you don’t need to rough up the roots and stuff at the bottom, and don’t even need to untangle the rhizomes. Hmm. Anyway, it might still recover, so I’ll just have to monitor it. I trimmed off some of the smaller culms (most of them droopy anyway) to help it concentrate energy in the more desirable ones.
2006.10.09
The sickly bamboo is doing much better now. A couple weeks ago I cut off all the small stems around the main one. Not sure if that helped or not, but anyway, looks like it has recovered.
Planting Bamboo