Bamboo Update 12/1/2018

It's December 1st!  And time to update what we've done with the bamboo forest here at P2.

The "Southland" has made major strides this year toward becoming a massive bamboo wall between us and our neighbor to the south "Sean".  Between strategic purchases of our favorite Emerald bamboo from Rockledge Gardens and the propagation of the Seabreeze bamboo forest clumps, we're well on the way to the impermeable bamboo wall we dream of.

I'll update with pictures soon, but for now, here's the lineup (starting from the southeast corner moving toward the southwest corner of P2).

1. Big Mike (banana plant at the southeast corner)
2. Queen palm (new, planted Nov 2018)
3. Calamondin (one of the few remaining citrus trees from when we moved here)

and now the bamboo...

4. Angel mist
5. Original recipe (propagated cane turned monster clump)
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.

The Southgate Seabreeze Bamboo Wall is Born!

Last week, I got very ambitious and, in spite of the heat and humidity, decided it was time to start to grow the south bamboo forest.  We had the holes dug and ready to go so it was time to either 1) buy 15 3 gallon bamboo pots, or 2) do some digging in the current Seabreeze bamboo from 2016 and pull out some nice clumps.

I've been very very anxious to do a "proof of concept" and pull out some very healthy clumps from the Seabreeze wall.  When we planted those 3 gallon Seabreeze bamboo plants, we placed them right next to each other rather than leaving 1 foot or 2 feet between them.... which means, there was PLENTY of bamboo to share.  I knew if I just picked a nice spot and began digging, I could pull out enough to populate the south gate with very little impact to the existing nice fluffy Seabreeze wall.

It took probably 6 hours total of digging, pulling, and sawing with the Makita reciprocating saw (bamboo rhizomes are a healthy bunch!)...  but I did it!  Here's the first pictures of the new Southgate Seabreeze wall.

(add pictures soon!)

NEW BAMBOO AND BANANAS, THANKSGIVING 2017

Mary could not stop herself, she was out bright and early every morning over Thanksgiving break. She was chopping broccoli, moving banana plants and carving out new bamboo from some of our Emerald.

Here is how you make bamboo, dig down, cut the rhizome and you've got a new stick of bamboo ready to plant

Look at those roots, this bamboo is excited and ready to start a new stand of Emerald

We love the green color of the Emerald bamboo

Four new bamboo plants planted in the shady area near our irrigation pump

These are the new bamboo from Rockledge Gardens plus one Emerald from our inventory

Baby bamboo we planted less than a year ago, growing nicely, very fluffy

Another view of Rockledge Gardens new bamboo plants

One Emerald cane in the midst of Rockledge Gardens bamboo, this one is from our Emerald

This group of bamboo was planted over the 2017 Thanksgiving break. We bought four Emerald and two Hawaiian-Stripe bamboo plants at Rockledge Gardens nursery. 

Mary dug and carved out more Emerald bamboo from our own growth. 

Ants under ground

The banana circle is flourishing, but no bananas yet

These bananas were floundering by the bridge, too much water so we moved them to a new area

The banana orchard

Angel Mist

Original Recipe Bamboo - Propagated

Emerald bamboo - propagated

Alphonse Karr

Black bamboo - almost left for dead after ignoring him for a year, and with a little water he's sprouting green

Another Alphonse Karr

Original Recipe Bamboo - Propagated (2nd of 2)

HO-Fo, One of our $10 Home Depot banana experiments

New Bamboo Update - July 1 2017

New cane on "A"

I found new canes on A, G, and H

So pretty when they first burst out of the ground, growing 6" a day!

G is particularly prolific with 4 new canes

The wall of bamboo will be VERY thick after this years canes

First Emerald Bamboo 2017: June

We now have 20 large field grown Emerald bamboo clumps - 10 last year and 10 this year.  Since the 2nd 10 went in earlier this year, we've been anxiously awaiting when the first new canes would come out.  We hoped for spring, but suspected that they would be out in summer... considering that the first canes appeared last year in August.

Well, today is June 25th, and we have four meaty Emerald canes on G (last year's clumps are 1-10, this years are A-J).  Exciting!

I expect MANY more are on the way, but it's a great data point to remember when the first canes appeared.

Bamboo Propagation Study - March 2017

I spent a couple of hours in early March using the reciprocating saw to cut out Emerald bamboo canes that had been cut short in the back of the 10 original clumps.  They were cut when FPL came through and decided that they were too close to the power line in the back, which goes over Drew's property.

That's fine, we turned lemons into lemonade!  I cut out the 4-6' canes at the rhizome/root level, cut them down to 2-3 feet, and put each of them in 3 gallon pots with potting mix.  The objective, of course, is to create bamboo that could be sold to someone (or planted all over P2's new ag zones that we're pondering).  There are about 10 pots which are now in the process of propagation.

Here's the timeline I'm going to be watching for:

NEW BAMBOO SPROUT ATTEMPT OCT 23 2016

Here are eight new pots eith our latest bamboo sprouting attempt fully underway (hint: it's the row with blue tags).

This time we took cuttings from a stalk of Emerald bamboo between the 4th and 12th nodes. Each cutting had approximately three inches of cane on either side of the node. Mary trimmed the outgrowth so a single strand stuck out above the soil (except on one which is completely buried).

We are excited to crack the code on sprouting bamboo, it's supposed to be easy but so far we only have two successes to point to, fortunatel Spike and Baby-Baby have both launched new larger canes which indicates they're healthy and happy.

NEW BAMBOO
- TODAYS COUNT
125 new bamboo canes as of today, that is UP from 103 on Sept 17th.

Today is the first day we noticed a new cane coming up on our "Baby" bamboo plant.

Here is Baby's first real cane coming up.

The "Overachiever" Award goes to Fluffy the bamboo plant, this beast grew at least 36" this week, it's going to be transplanted into bamboo area tomorrow before it bursts through the pool screen roof.

BRING IN THE CLONES

We borrowed heavily from various gardeners on YouTube in building our Bamboo Clone Machine. Our water is from our own artesian well, we carefully balanced the PH to 6.2 knowing the 82 degree water temperature will rise in PH over the next week.

Today is day number one. We used Clonex for rooting hormone and the only cutters that would cleanly snip the hard bamboo cuttings were some new Xcylite flush-cut wire cutters I purchased recently.

The ART-dne interval timer is set for 50 seconds ON and four-minutes OFF.

Update March 2017:  None of the clone machine bamboo sticks rooted.  Bamboo is weird : )

BABY-BABY BAMBOO & TIM
Last fall we began an experiment to root new bamboo from canes we harvested off our property. Out of 10 to 20 pieces that had visible growth happening only one plant sprouted a plant, I named it "Baby Bamboo". Subsequently while were preparing to dispose of the waste we discovered a second sprout had come up in another pot and it was quickly named "baby-baby bamboo".

Today we moved baby-baby to a three-gallon pot so it can develop fully.

baby-baby is closest to the screen, baby bamboo is next and to the right of it is our latest bamboo spieces which we put into a three-gallon pot, it's name is Tim as in giant timber five-inches in diameter and green in color. Mary ordered over the internet and received Tim by mail for a total cost of around $50.

It is a fun research project examining how each variety grows.

OVER 70 NEW CANES
This morning we examined the Emerald bamboo we had installed last March, we have over 70 new canes shooting up across the 10 clumps.

BABY BAMBOO!

You can buy plants all day long at the hardware store or nursery.  But when you successfully propagate your favorite plant, it's amazingly rewarding.  Here's Baby Bamboo, propagated from our cluster of emerald bamboo.  He's skinny and tall, so we shot a picture of the base.  He's about two months old now.  Yay!

Here's the line of plants in the nursery.  We have high hopes that more bamboo will grow babies.