Help! New Bambusa emeiensis 'Viridiflavus(Yin Yang) Troubles

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STUALU321
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Help! New Bambusa emeiensis 'Viridiflavus(Yin Yang) Troubles

Post by STUALU321 »

Hello all! I have dreamed of surrounding my entire house with a wall of bamboo for 3 years now. At first I started looking at bamboo because of how fast it would grow but then after looking at the different kinds I fell in love with how beautiful it is. Every year I think about how full my privacy fence would be if I had just planted it the previous year, so this year I finally pulled the trigger. I Planted 55 three Gallon Plants around my yard. I found a man that had a nursery in west palm with tons of yin yang and monastery and other types of bautiful bamboo that were hard to find at other places. His issue was that he wasnt computer savy and said that he did all his business with landscapers which only bought seabreeze and graceful, so he was willing to part with the yin tang for a deal beacause he wanted to make room for the graceful and because he had them for so long without selling. So I drove down there with an enclosed trailer and picked them up, it was a 2 hour drive back. When I got home it was late and too dark to plant that night so I stood them all up in my yard and watered with the hose and planted the next 2 days. Some of the plants were as tall as 15 feet with lots of leaves and some had 3 canes, much bigger than most other peoples bamboo they were selling.
Now here is my problem, when I picked the bamboo up they all had beautiful dark green leaves but some of them 2 days later were already light green and curling looking very deadish. And many of the bamboo that looked this way hadn't been planted yet or taken out of the pot. I know that is a sign of underwatering but I( had them all set up on drip irrigation and they were all getting the same amount of water 1-2 gallons a day. I called the guy I bought them from and he said give more water so I didn over the next few days, leaves uncurled but never looked healthy again, some turned dark orange mixed with green. So now here I am a week later and I;m wondering if my Bamboo is dying. Here are some facts that might help anyone willing to help

- Most of the plants that look very bad now were the plants that were the biggest and had the most amount of leaves
-These same plants had roots bursting out of their pots at the nursery or growing through the holes in the pot and had actually began growing into the soil at the nursery, some of the plants had to be given a really good tug before they could be lifted from the ground due to those roots.
-The bad looking plants were divisions of a mature plant that had been potted for 6 months - a year with 1 inch to 1 1/2 inch canes.
-The plants that look more healthy have alot of leaves and are at least 8 feet with canes a half inch or smaller were grown from cuttings.
-The plants that look bad dont have any new green buds on the canes or stems, they have all turned brown.
-I planted all plants correctly and used 50lbs of black kow compost mixed in with 50% native soil(other plant grew well in this soil but I removed them for bamboo)
-When plants were transforted the were all stack on their sides laying down but upon inspection while planting none of them had damage to the root balls.
-The unhealthy looking plants seem like their canes are looking more brownish green compared to the bright green they were before.
-I romoved mulch and dug 12 inches down and the soild was nice and moist but not mushy.

My questions are:

-Are the plants dropping leaves dead? and if they are will it still send up new shoots or are the roots dead as well?
-I've read that the sign of overwatering is yellow leaves but I have only seen a dark bright orange, is this from overwatering or is this just what they look like when they are dying and going form green to brown.

Help Please!!! I've spent so much money on these plants and will be devastated if half of them die. Should I water more, water less, prune, ect..????

Thanks in Advance for anyone that might be able to shed some light!!!

Parent Plant
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h80/c ... dw68zc.jpg

Unhealthy Looking Plant 2 days After buying
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h80/c ... fsxkle.jpg

Unhealthy looking plant After a week
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h80/c ... s4ebia.jpg

Unhealthy Plant's cane after a week
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h80/c ... g8fvna.jpg

What leaves look like on most other plants
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h80/c ... vs7hsa.jpg
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h80/c ... w9kt77.jpg

My hopefully eventual fence
http://i61.photobucket.com/albums/h80/c ... w9kt77.jpg
Cooper12
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Re: Help! New Bambusa emeiensis 'Viridiflavus(Yin Yang) Trou

Post by Cooper12 »

others will likely chime in. 1 question. How hot was it inside the trailer? Heat doesn't take long to damage bamboo in enclosed trucks. Especially if the plants are root bound and possibly not hydrated in the middle of the root/rhizome mass.
I am not sure if this was the case being its early March but i have seen similar things on others.

other things could be just lack of water in root bound plants even with drip. it may of just been the time from the nursery to your place. Where any of the Rhizomes cut? if so its always good to cut the culms back some. I do this by about 30% after digging or dividing bamboo.
I have seen burnt culms like that after bamboo went through a very dry and hot period. One of my Shanghai 3 did that and it recovered . Hopefully yours will too. Now i am not certain it was this or any other thing I noted but chances are if they looked good when you went to get them and shortly after they look like this it is some sort of stress.
Did you feed them when you planted them? If so what did you use and what where the weather conditions?

I tend to think you will have foliage loss on the dried and burnt leaves but many should re leaf on healthy culms . Damaged culms may or may not recover depending on extent but i wait for them to dry out before i remove because they may releaf
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Glen
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Re: Help! New Bambusa emeiensis 'Viridiflavus(Yin Yang) Trou

Post by Glen »

It does sound like damage from underwatering. When the plants that were rooted in the ground were lifted, they lost some of their root mass, and this could be a contributing factor.

I would not recommend drip irrigation for establishing these plants. Unless you have adequate experience, it is too easy to underwater and/or incorrectly distribute water. This is particularly true on sandy soil. Is this what you have?

New plants need to have their rootballs completely soaked with each watering. Under circumstances like you describe, I would be FLOODING each rootball every day by hand watering, unless it had rained significantly that day. I normally continue this for about two weeks, which is usually enough time for the plants to get a few roots into the surrounding soil. One or two minutes of daily hand watering per plant for a couple weeks can make all the difference.

When a plant is freshly planted in the ground, it has no roots in the surrounding soil. Even if the surrounding soil is moist, the plant can dry to the point of death. You must SOAK the original rootball.

Only time will tell how extensive the damage may be. If they were my plants, I would water heavily, fertilize lightly, and wait. If the plants are completely brown, and there is no new growth by mid summer, it is time to replace the plants.

Pruning completely dead growth will do no harm, but there is no plant health related reason to prune anything at this point.
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Re: Help! New Bambusa emeiensis 'Viridiflavus(Yin Yang) Trou

Post by Tarzanus »

It could also be fertilizer burn, if you used too much. It can look almost identical to drought related issues.
Keep them watered and let them recover. They are most likely growing a bit smaller rhizomes and survival shoots which will enable them to bounce back in a couple of months. They should recover just fine, if they were not damaged too much during the transport. If rootball was too compacted, it is possible that the plants are drying out too fast. In that case, you may ant to shade them out a bit, cut off some of their branches. Well, they did the latter themselves already.

I usually don't fertilize at all first month after planting. Well, if I do, I use old manure and avoid anything highly concentrated. Better safe than sorry.

Bamboo can tolerate a lot. I'm sure it will bounce back. Good luck!
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Glen
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Re: Help! New Bambusa emeiensis 'Viridiflavus(Yin Yang) Trou

Post by Glen »

In my experience, tropical bamboos (Bambusa sp.) are quite resistant to damage from salts in fertilizers and irrigation water. Temperate bamboos, such as Phyllostacys sp., are far more susceptible. I fertilized my tropical bamboos, even fresh divisions, several weeks ago, and they responded almost immediately with healthier, greener growth.

In the southern United States, warm soil temperatures increase the demand for fertilizer, especially nitrogen. Using high quality water soluble and/or granular fertilizers at the higher labeled rates has never caused any apparent damage to any of my Bambusa sp. I irrigate with water that contains around 750 ppm TDS, without any sign of damage to these plants. Of course, heavy rainfall and irrigation periodically flushes excess salts out of the system.

The composted manure mentioned by the original poster should be quite safe. The only way I could see salt damage playing a role here is if he is close enough to the ocean to have saline soils. I do not know how resistant his plants would be to that degree of salinity, as I have not grown plants under those conditions.
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shuboo
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Re: Help! New Bambusa emeiensis 'Viridiflavus(Yin Yang) Trou

Post by shuboo »

I would give them time. Bamboo is pretty resilient. I have had similar experiences over the past 20 years when buying from others. A lot of time the plants go into shock if the roots have grown from the container and found the their way into the ground and are pulled out of the ground when the container is moved or relocated. Hang in there
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HurryUp&Grow
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Re: Help! New Bambusa emeiensis 'Viridiflavus(Yin Yang) Trou

Post by HurryUp&Grow »

I'm no bamboo expert, but is it possible they're planted too deep or there's too much mulch covering the roots?
Adam A
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Re: Help! New Bambusa emeiensis 'Viridiflavus(Yin Yang) Trou

Post by Adam A »

It’s in shock, might drop most leaves as it is having trouble supporting that much. Probably will resprout all new leaves within a few months. Keep watering.
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