Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

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danjcla
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Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by danjcla »

Just planted a 4 inch pot phyllostachys atrovaginata, aka incense bamboo. Boston, MA, Zone 6b.

It's less than a foot tall, so the advice I'm finding anywhere to put a whole lot of mulch around it probably wouldn't work out so well. I haven't been able to find any advice to fit this situation.

Would building a little structure out of 2x2s and whatever the plastic material used in temporary greenhouses be useful?

Thanks for any wisdom you have to share,
-Danny
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by needmore »

4" pots are awfully tiny for bamboo and it is tough to get them going strong. To fit a pot that small suggests that there is not much rhizome or at least not many dormant buds from which new growth can emerge so the odds were against you upon receipt of the plant. The plant can stay alive w/o the buds but be quite slow to produce new growth. A big challenge for a small plant like that is to dial in the watering - I'd err on the dry side of things - and yes, during winter you will want to protect it from cold winds/temps with a tiny greenhouse or similar.
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by T9D »

Get rid of those rocks. There is no need for them and they will only cause problems. Then yes get mulch. Leave a little ring around where you can water and it can breath. When winter comes cover all the ground with mulch and build a little green house like you said.Actually just go to home depot and buy one of those clear containers and flip it upside down over it. Will make a nice greenhouse.
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by danjcla »

needmore wrote:A big challenge for a small plant like that is to dial in the watering - I'd err on the dry side of things -
One reason I got this type of bamboo is that it, in theory, can be on the wetter side of things due to air canals along the outer wall - although perhaps that's only when it gets older?
needmore wrote:4" pots are awfully tiny for bamboo and it is tough to get them going strong. To fit a pot that small suggests that there is not much rhizome or at least not many dormant buds from which new growth can emerge so the odds were against you upon receipt of the plant. The plant can stay alive w/o the buds but be quite slow to produce new growth.
Sounds like 4" pots should maybe only be sold for indoor use then? In any case, aggravating, always hate having the pot odds against me. The 4" I got from Hirt's Gardens, stupidly I ended up looking at reviews of suppliers after having made the order, in general they don't seem to be too highly regarded.

When I still thought I might be able to cancel that order I contacted Lewis Bamboo, highly rated various places, they were super-helpful. The space doesn't have room for a 8" pot to fit in, but they told me "Our 2 gallon sizes are 6-8" in diameter depending upon the level of maturity of the root structure. We have a large enough selection that We can probably find a 2 gallon that looks great but has a root system that could compress in this area."
needmore wrote:and yes, during winter you will want to protect it from cold winds/temps with a tiny greenhouse or similar.
What do people think would make more sense - spending a lot of time / effort and likely $40+ on materials for a jenky mini-greenhouse for the 4" bamboo, or just replace it with a new $40 "2 Gallon" 6" root ball bamboo at the earliest advisable point after New England winter is over?

Also, here are some more pics to describe the situation... even though there is only space for around a 6" initial planting circle, there is a lot of space for the plant to expand in to via 1-3" wide crevices or under 1', across 1', up 1'.
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by johnw »

I too was surprised to hear of a Phyllo in a 4" pot and ,like Brad wondered if there were any dormant buds in there. Did you see any rhizome - as opposed to root - growth when you planted it? I suppose it could be a tissue-cultured atro that it is perfectly fine with lots of buds in the making. Here's hoping.

Don't spend alot of money building a mini-ghouse; go to a place that sells spring water and ask for one of those big jugs it comes in (12-15 gal.), they frequently get cracks and they will give you a damaged one. Cut the bottom out, paint the south side and afix it by poking a few good-sized culms through the mouth and into the ground.



Frankly it would appear the space is far too small for a Phyllo!
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by danjcla »

T9D wrote:Get rid of those rocks. There is no need for them and they will only cause problems.
Thanks! I cut down a 4" mesh pencil holder, so there is a ring now (pic below). I'd really like to leave the rocks, IMHO they work great aesthetically with the rest of the little garden. In the close-up it looks a bit ratty now with the uneven lines of marble vs ring and out of true ring, but that's not noticeable from standing position. Anyway, what kind of problems?
T9D wrote:Then yes get mulch. Leave a little ring around where you can water and it can breath. When winter comes cover all the ground with mulch and build a little green house like you said. Actually just go to home depot and buy one of those clear containers and flip it upside down over it. Will make a nice greenhouse.
The problem with the pre-made one-piece plastic stuff is that the fit is real specific - bottom needs to be around 6 inches, flare out to around 9 inches (up the incline of the tree stump), around a foot tall. Also, I read somewhere that the plant shouldn't be able to touch the sides of a winter protection container, due to leaf burn, and given it currently touches a maple tree stump on one side and a clay planter (aka chimney flue liner) on the other side, there would seem to be no way to do that.

Ohh, I may have been thinking of how to mulch wrong. Should I do something like leave the internal 4" diameter bare earth (so no contact between culms and mulch), then like half an inch of mulch 4-5" -- up to a point I can put in a taller ring -- and then as deep as possible after that?
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by danjcla »

johnw wrote:I too was surprised to hear of a Phyllo in a 4" pot and ,like Brad wondered if there were any dormant buds in there. Did you see any rhizome - as opposed to root - growth when you planted it? I suppose it could be a tissue-cultured atro that it is perfectly fine with lots of buds in the making. Here's hoping.!
I'm too much of a clueless newbie to know I saw anything more than a lot of really tangled up white strings of varies diameters. I tried to loosen some up but doing so without destroying stuff seemed like pretty much a lost cause; I freed up maybe 2% of the roots. One thing I remember is that there were marble-sized balls of what I thought of as thick roots on each bottom corner. Some of the roots had what looked like tiny dendrites on them. I don't remember seeing anything pointy.
johnw wrote:Don't spend alot of money building a mini-ghouse; go to a place that sells spring water and ask for one of those big jugs it comes in (12-15 gal.), they frequently get cracks and they will give you a damaged one. Cut the bottom out, paint the south side and afix it by poking a few good-sized culms through the mouth and into the ground.
I tried one of the normal ones, and it was too big. But you just reminded me that they do make smaller ones. It looks like I want something 3 gallon; "3 gallon jar" is getting me lots of hits to look at soon.
johnw wrote:Frankly it would appear the space is far too small for a Phyllo!
My hope was that it'd get established in the little alcove, where it is relatively protected, and then expand out to a 2'x2' area and a 2'x5' area, which are both around 1' away, but those two areas get light foot traffic (I can temporarily fence off so the culms don't get stepped on while growing, and if they get around 2' tall they should likely be fine w.r.t. people noticing and not destroying them, but I was assuming the plant would be okay if some new culms in a new locale are destroyed, but not so much if the original rootball locale gets destroyed.)
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by danjcla »

To make the areas I'm talking about clear, below is a pic of a way-top view.

The general idea is to transition to something completely or mostly maintenance-free over a few years. From left to right 2' x 5' of lawn grass is super-annoying to keep looking nice, sedum in tree trunk planter might be okay by itself until the stump rots, if the conifer survives the winter it still won't survive being an 8" original diameter plant in a 10" planter for all that long.

So eventually it'd be awesome if the whole area had 7'+ bamboo culms in it / a plant that refuses to die. The only nearby yards, ours and our neighbors, already have ribosome barriers due to our neighbor's bamboo.
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by needmore »

I think that a running bamboo may be more than you are bargaining for there in those site conditions. If it has any viable rhizome buds it will likely expand out 2 feet in a few weeks.
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by danjcla »

needmore wrote:I think that a running bamboo may be more than you are bargaining for there in those site conditions. If it has any viable rhizome buds it will likely expand out 2 feet in a few weeks.
I'm missing why that would be bad - to me that makes it sound like, if it survives the winter, it'll put up (likely 2 feet tall?) culms right where I'd like them (up through the grass and mulch areas) in the spring.
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by Tarzanus »

Usually they will go and put up shoots right where you don't want them. :mrgreen:
It should work if you use rhizome barrier to protect the asphalt and other things around it, that could be damaged by roaming rhizomes. It will not be completely maintenance free, you will have to prune it's roots from time to time add a bit of fertilizer, clean dead culms, remove leaf litter, take out some of congested culms and so on.
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by dependable »

One problem with the location is proximity to road. It will not like snowplow load. If it does manage to survive and get big enough for your purposes, it will be a problem when snow, ice, or even rain make it droop out into the street.
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by danjcla »

dependable wrote:One problem with the location is proximity to road. It will not like snowplow load. If it does manage to survive and get big enough for your purposes, it will be a problem when snow, ice, or even rain make it droop out into the street.
Those are really good points. Plus I think I need to take it out of that space anyway, as I believe I messed up on the soil formulation (1 part peralite, 2 parts humus & manure, 3 parts topsoil). It's retaining water like crazy. Days now, still super-wet.

I'm thinking the spot between the sidewalk, clay planter, and tree stump are (where the cedar mulch is currently) could work out; I can just put up a little 4x4 "curb" so it doesn't get stepped on or something.

Aside: Suggestions on soil recipe? I probably should have done 1:1:1 as Hirt's suggested a normal potting soil mix, but something I read somewhere suggested that kind of bamboo liked more humus or something like that.
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by dependable »

I usually plant in something like a 50/50 soil/compost mix. In your (more urban) situation, i would suggest something like one of the Coast of Maine bagged compost or soil products.
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Re: Overwintering tiny bamboo plant?

Post by danjcla »

dependable wrote:I usually plant in something like a 50/50 soil/compost mix. In your (more urban) situation, i would suggest something like one of the Coast of Maine bagged compost or soil products.
The compost-y stuff I used was probably low quality, scotts premium humus & manure it was called. However, I was wrong, it seems like the soil is actually draining - put my finger down into it all the way, seemed just slightly damp. It just causes my moisture meter to ping all the way to wet (like past the top marked number) every time. Meter works fine elsewhere. I don't have scotts humus & manure elsewhere, so maybe that has ingredients in it that confuse the meter.

One thing I did notice is that, while not wet or dense-seeming to me, after I pulled my finger out no soil fell back into the hole. Sort of self-adhesive. Needed to get some more soil to fill it.

It contains: organic materials (peat, composted forest products, aged rice hulls, or compost), composted manure, pelleted poultry litter.
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