permaculture

[Rick Valley <bamboogrove@cmug.com>]

"I say "Go for invasive!"" -Bill Mollison

Please forgive me- I spent my first day this year, today, digging bamboo
divisions in the rain. I think I de-laminated.

> Most nurseries that sell bamboo also sell containers to grow them in under
> ground.  I haven't seen these containers but apparently they vary in size
> and will help keep a running bamboo in check.

These containers are for the most part, the size of large nursery pots. You
get a bush, not a grove. Anyone with a bamboo bush is not very likely to do
anything with it. You get much higher quality material from a grove. And
bigger. I personally like to walk around inside my bamboo forest. For a
low-maintenance green bush, get a dwarf conifer. (which are great for
creating a good seed bed for poppies or such- just flic a bic on 'em when
it's dry. So- they do have a use, those dwarf conifers!) A little bushy
bamboo makes good tomato stakes, but so do the branches of a big one.

Some of the other limitations of containers:
1)they are made of non-renewable resources, energy intensive material
2)the bamboo rhizomes tend to follow the barrier after the hit it- and go
around and around and around and around. All new canes come from the newer
rhizome. Can you visualize the pattern of growth after awhile?
3) rhizomes can indeed, hop over a barrier. And they do; you need to check
it at least every year. The French built the Maginot line- but bamboo is
Rommel in veggie form.

Quoth Wild Hermine of Endangered Species Nursery:
"Real Men Don't Use Barriers"

If it took plastic containers to keep bamboo in check, why is the entire
Orient not one huge bamboo grove?


> If however the bamboo gets out of hand and is indeed palatable to cattle,
> well the cows would then seem to be a pretty good control mechanism.  I know
> that in Texas our great cane forest along the Brazos river was decimated by
> cattle.

Would cattle eat a non-toxic grass that tops out at 14% protein in the
winter? Is the bear Catholic?

But the heck wit the cattle, I'll eat it.

-Rick