Best Bamboo Nursery Book?

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terrabamboo
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Best Bamboo Nursery Book?

Post by terrabamboo »

Hey All,

Recently, I have gotten an urge to start a bamboo nursery. I have rudimentary knowledge but I would like to know if there is a gold standard book written already?
Terra Bamboo
300 acre Bamboo Plantation Project
Focusing on Henon, Moso, Robert Young, Rubro, Vivax and Fargesia
wolfedg
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Re: Best Bamboo Nursery Book?

Post by wolfedg »

I'm sure there are other alternatives out there so keep looking below as others make recommendations, but from the ones I have, these are my recommendations.

If you are looking for information of how to structure and place your groves, plant, fertilise, identify various phyllostachys timber bamboos(pretty much exclusively), marketing of product(namely shoots and poles but may be a starting point for a nursery), and other general growth knowledge, I'd recommend Farming Bamboo by Daphne Lewis and Carol Miles. This book is a bit more technical and will not impress you with its grayscale photos, but it contains information you might not find elsewhere about the various timber bamboo types. It is somewhat biased to growing bamboo in the pacific northwest part of the U.S., but should be useful regardless.

If you are looking for a general knowledge book for the U.S. with lots of colorful pictures, information on most of the commonly available species, growth habits, planting, etc then, I'd recommend Ted Meredith's Bamboo for Gardens.

If you want the same as the previous but for the U.K. then its Hardy Bamboos by Paul Whittaker

These are all the books I currently own on the subject and I am very pleased with all of them. The last two are very similar in most respects in their content, but Paul Whittaker's book does take a bit more personal/experience based approach.
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terrabamboo
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Re: Best Bamboo Nursery Book?

Post by terrabamboo »

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm looking for the technical aspects of dividing bamboo, times of the year where there is most work, expenses for the nursery, etc.

Would Daphne's book satisfy most of that?
Terra Bamboo
300 acre Bamboo Plantation Project
Focusing on Henon, Moso, Robert Young, Rubro, Vivax and Fargesia
wolfedg
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Re: Best Bamboo Nursery Book?

Post by wolfedg »

terrabamboo wrote:Thanks for the suggestions. I'm looking for the technical aspects of dividing bamboo, times of the year where there is most work, expenses for the nursery, etc.

Would Daphne's book satisfy most of that?
It certainly covers digging bamboo, tools to use, best parts to dig from, and the best times to do so (at least for the PNW) with about 2.5 pages of solid text on the subject. It also discusses seeds and starter plants on the page previous. As mentioned previously the authors have focused on production and marketing of poles and shoots, and dont go into much deal of the specifics of marketing live plants.

That being said its probably as close as you are going to find on the subject matter as far as I can tell, but there are likely many books out there on bamboo that aren't as readily available that could go into it more. I'll leave that for the more experienced people on this forum. In any case Farming Bamboo is avaiable on amazon for only $27 at the time of this post.
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Re: Best Bamboo Nursery Book?

Post by David »

Hello Terrabamboo.
Where are you located?
David Arnold
Middle Tennessee Bamboo Farm
USDA zone 6b
kettlebell
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Re: Best Bamboo Nursery Book?

Post by kettlebell »

Thanks for those recommended books. I just ordered Bamboo For Gardens.


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