Thinning out older small culms to promote larger new shoots.

Document your results with different mulches, seeds, mutations, TC or other experiments.

Moderators: needmore, David

fredgpops
Posts: 885
Joined: Thu Apr 21, 2005 11:26 pm
Location info: 0
Location: plus 700ft in the Santa Cruz Mtns, 8 miles from the Pacific
35 miles S. of San Jose

Re: Thinning out older small culms to promote larger new sho

Post by fredgpops »

A couple of nurseries that focus on clumpers, recommend thinning them. They do it, not to encourage growth, but rather create room for new, larger culms. I believe, based upon what I have seen, the same holds true for potted plants, runner or clumper, as there is a lack of real estate for new, larger culms to shoot. Rgds
stevelau1911
Posts: 3088
Joined: Sun Nov 23, 2008 9:15 pm
Location info: 42
Location: upstate NY zone 6B
Contact:

Re: Thinning out older small culms to promote larger new sho

Post by stevelau1911 »

Last year my moso grove produced nearly 150 shoots averaging around 0.4 inches in diameter which was only around a 50% increase in size from the previous year's. It started with only around 20-30 existing culms that were produced in 2009. It was also heavily watered and fertilized in March as shown in the picture. I think that too much pampering before shooting season may have lead to too many shoot buds going off which may have limited the size of each individual shoot since the energy was spread so thin. I ultimately ended up thinning out more than 1/2 of the existing culms by July which may not have been necessary if I didn't add a few hundred lbs of manure on it on top of regular watering with the soaker hose. Without a thinning it would be way too congested like a tight clumper.

Image

There are about 60-70 culms on it now and I'm not hoping to activate every bud and get 400 shoots on this grove next year so the best thing to leave it alone on the 1st of march, not even water it at all and allow it to shoot naturally hoping it doesn't rain almost every day. I noticed that Trepanier only had like 4 shoots on his moso however they were well upsized. I also noticed that the heteroclada seedlings that I left alone and never watered were the ones that put on the largest size increase despite only making 1-2 culms. I don't know if it was the high nitrogen in the manure, the age of the seedling or the availability of water that caused the massive explosion of shoots this year, but I think a hands off approach should prevent it from happening again next April. This may prevent the need for a massive thinning.

I might pamper my dulcis in March since that one tends to make less shoots anyways, and seems to be a lot more spread out compared to other species.
Post Reply