Here's a picture of the parvifolia grove as of today. As shown, it's newest culms are even a bit taller than the tallest that emerged in the last couple of years which were probably around 22ft, so the tallest culm completely straightened out may be around 25ft, but there's no measuring method other...

It looks like you have fresh field divisions which will struggle to produce any new rhizome growth this year so it would be a good idea to pot them up in 3-5 gollon pots give them very good soil to stimulate root growth. when they are potted up, they can simply be layed on their side, partially buri...

Are you sure that gophers eat bamboos? If not then you shouldn't worry about it. I've found that they only eat certain plants in my garden, but the biggest disturbance is that they simply make tunnels, and destroy plans in the process of it. You could set up traps inside the gopher holes, and this w...

The propinqua Beijing is the 2nd most impressive bamboo behind shanghaii III which literally exploded as shown in the previous pictures. Propinqua is over 15ft tall now with some 1 inch culms which are leafed out, but not showing signs of flowering yet so it looks like it may be on a recovery. It lo...

I was back in upstate NY last weekend, and did get plenty of nice pictures of shoots. Although the atro, and parvifolia only have pioneer shoots which generally aren't the largest, I do have a nice upsize on the shanghai III. Shanghai III: I counted 27 shoots that look like they should make it which...

What kind of light setup do you have? I've grown lots of bamboos from seeds, and one thing I've found is that if they are indoors and under less than ideal lighting conditions, there will not be enough energy to encourage roots to grow. Based on how those look, some of your roots may be rotting. Unl...

You could possibly turn those rhizomes upwards and get them to stop traveling during the summer which may be better than in the early spring since not much energy will be transferred to the rhizomes yet. A few of my bamboos have started shooting including propinqua beijing, dulcis, nigra, shanghai I...

I've seen that kind of pattern quite a bit on developing bamboos, even my green moso when I still had it. New rhizomes tend to make smaller shoots, while rhizomes that are a season older can often produce bigger shoots. The amount your foliage gets damaged can often reduce the amount of energy going...

Based on the dark color of the sheath leaves and how the top nodes tend to elongate at about the same rate as the bottom nodes, I believe you do have atrovaginata. I also see a 6th shoot on the side, and from what I've seen out of atrovaginata, it does tend to make more shoots after the initial wave...

Last winter wasn't all that bad, and it did get down to 3F in early March, but overall, it is a much better year than it has been in the past years. The one that made it through the best is the moso bicolor which looks almost unscathed through the double tarp so it should get back quite a bit of siz...

My guess is that Austria doesn't get that cold, but it may be good to have a small heater inside that little greenhouse just in case it gets well below freezing since moso bicolor is not all that hardy especially when it is that small. Also it may be good to keep the cover on until the temperatures ...

Based on my observations over the years, the checkerboard spots only occur in the late Autumn into winter, more so on young moso seedling leaves and I believe it is a combination of cold temperatures, relatively strong light shining on cold leaves, and the root system unable to supply water to all t...

Overwintering bamboos is actually quite complicated in some cases especially with very small bamboos that don't have a solid network of roots and rhizomes yet. if leaves happen to be curling inward due to dehydration, then the bamboo is failing to get moisture from the roots to the leaves mostly due...

My tallest Makinoi culm from this spring is only about 10ft when straightened out, but last year's culms got up to around 11ft so it has better potential than that. It doesn't look that tall since it produces long leaves, and fans out like and umbrella. I do believe that since it is being protected ...

It's nice that your culms can still bend all the way down to the ground because even with any bit of snow, or even ice over the tarp, and it can get way below 0F, but the bamboos will still be insulated. That's virtually 100% protection for zone 6 and warmer. Only my bicolor, and fargesias have that...