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January has been a brutal month for my area. There's been little to no snow for insulation, and many brutally cold days and nights. I did just gave them a dose of warm/hot water, but I doubt it would help given the continuing low temperatures for the weeks ahead with no reprieve in sight.

Sorry to hear that man, I feel your pain and do not miss those days for me.

We are also having cold and sunny weather here in Slovenia. So far only Tongpeia arachnoides (Borinda fungosa/gaolinensis) is showing leaf damage and quite a lot of culm breakage. There was 5 cm or so of heavy wet snow and it flattened all the bamboos. Not enough to insulate anything, yet, enough to cause substantial damage. The weather pattern is not changing and I fear the mentioned Tongpeia is going to suffer.

Well, we just had about 10 inches of snow overnight.
It's a bit late, but hopefully not too late. The leaves have already curled for nearly a week.

Soon comes the sage color and then leaf drop in a few weeks...they might even unroll if that snow melts but...

Yeah, they will seemingly recover, but when the weather warms up and dries the wet leaves, expect nice smell of dry bamboo leaves. Similar to hay but different.

I am ok with 100% leaf burn. Just hope it's not top kill, because that would be a set back for a couple of years growth.

Not sure how solid this is but it almost seemed to me like burned plants that end up leafing back out are slow to shoot as the leaves take forever to flush and then shoot late and don't shoot much, whereas top kills shoot lots and fast albeit smaller has anyone else seen this?

I've seen that too, fully defoliated culms use most of the spring energy re leafing, so there is not much left for new shoots. I'm not sure if killed to ground gets going faster than defoliated over the long term however. It probably depends on the variety and age of culms involved.

That is definitely true that energy spent releafing takes away from new shoots. So far in SE Texas 8B, the lowest temperatures have dipped into the low 20s which has managed to halt new leaf growth and stunt shoot growth but nowhere close to being cold enough to leaf burn temperate running bamboos. There is a nursery around here that specializes in mainly tropical clumping types but I would rather play it safe and start with the types that can handle our climate. We have finally gotten some chilling hours and some deciduous trees as well as grape Vines appear to be swelling their buds which could be from the vernalization or gradually increasing daylight hours. Doesn't look like we will have deep freezes after this week so I intend to start foliar feeding the new bamboos to ensure they are nice and green prior to shooting season which should happen in March here. Definitely glad I'm not growing bamboos in a marginal climate now since all the tarping was too much work.

stevelau1911 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 24, 2022 3:19 pm That is definitely true that energy spent releafing takes away from new shoots. So far in SE Texas 8B, the lowest temperatures have dipped into the low 20s which has managed to halt new leaf growth and stunt shoot growth but nowhere close to being cold enough to leaf burn temperate running bamboos. There is a nursery around here that specializes in mainly tropical clumping types but I would rather play it safe and start with the types that can handle our climate. We have finally gotten some chilling hours and some deciduous trees as well as grape Vines appear to be swelling their buds which could be from the vernalization or gradually increasing daylight hours. Doesn't look like we will have deep freezes after this week so I intend to start foliar feeding the new bamboos to ensure they are nice and green prior to shooting season which should happen in March here. Definitely glad I'm not growing bamboos in a marginal climate now since all the tarping was too much work.

Hey Steve, what about your bamboo in upstate new york? I am curious how they turn out all these years.

Rich Reitz who has been on this forum has pretty much every species I had initially and John Pedlow who actually lives around the Niagara falls areas has a lot of them too. I've actually spread out a lot of the bamboos into the local area before leaving but don't know how whatever is still left is doing since I haven't lived there in a decade. The less hardy ones would have likely died off.

One thing I did learn is that covered bamboos that have an oil lamp under them and a heat sink never have any issues with the extreme cold and snow cover insulates them very well too so as long as bamboo could be bent over, it was easy to protect. Only plan on planting a few bamboos here. Biggest issue is that in the backyard, from 3-10 inches below the soil, it is all limestone which means I need to add in a bunch of stuff to plant them or maybe even drill the rocks, then use expanding agent to bust through them in order to optimize the growing space. Good thing is that winters here are just long enough for a winter dormancy but not brutal of extensive enough to hinder growth.

Yeah... It's been about a decade since I got Atrovagina and Parvifolia from you. Spring/Summer 2012 as I remember. My Parvifolia managed to reach 15/16 feet several years ago at its max height before a harsh winter top killed it. It was reduced to about 1/3 in height after top kill. This past summer, it has rebounded back to about 10 to 15 feet. With a mild Winter, I was expecting it to break the 20 feet mark next Spring. But, now it's looking like top kill again or significant leaf burn. We shall see.

Are you able to pull any of the culms down and tarp over them? I did that last year when we had an arctic blast -- grabbed a few smaller culms, tied them together, then pulled them down and tied to a stake. Then tarped over that. The idea is to keep some culms with green leaves... better than topkill!

It's a mystery to me. When I tried to pull the bamboo canes to the ground, I died a little. A lot of resistance. When less than an inch of snow falls, whole darn thing is flat on the ground.

Tarping some of bamboo does work. Shading and protecting it from wind exposure does a lot as well. I have noticed that usually northern side of bamboo remains undamaged or just slightly burnt. Despite cold northern wind, that side usually stays completely shaded during the day, which keeps the leaves cold and inactive. Southern side warms up way too much and they start losing water which they can't get to. I'm thinking about cutting some of my cold sensitive bamboos next year and just shade the whole thing heavily.