Planting bamboos that will be sold/traded in the ground

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stevelau1911
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Planting bamboos that will be sold/traded in the ground

Post by stevelau1911 »

I have around 20 mosos left from last year and some of them look like they are about to rip their 3-gallon pots apart with many rhizome trying to push through the sides of the pots and roots locking the pots down into the soil. I was thinking that since they don't spread very far, I might as well plant a screen of these guys, perhaps giving them 3ft of space in between each other.

The main reason I want to plant them in the ground is because the ones already in the ground seem to be growing faster than the potted ones. I'll just have to keep them pruned and let them up-size faster in the ground to hopefully get 5-6ft tall very well established clumps that I can either dig up to put on ebay or craigslist. I've figured out that the pots area really only useful for getting a division/seedling established since I never deliver the pots anymore.

I want to do this with the heterocladas, vivax's, and other more vigorous runners, but I don't want to go through the trouble of trying to dig out an octopus like plant that may be very hard to put into a bag and box up without breaking many of the rhizomes. The ground is pretty much like a giant pot where the bamboo can get as large as it wants before it gets sold or traded in one piece.
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movenosound
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Re: Planting bamboos that will be sold/traded in the ground

Post by movenosound »

Thought about just potting them up in a huge pot, and burying them? It has worked for me, though somewhat accidentally.

Potted up a bamboo, which earlier this year the group helped me identify as a aureosulcata aureocaulis, most likely, into on of those large blue plastic barrels that had been cut in half. Planted at a friend's house, it would have a raised bed created around it, not really intentionally, just bad luck in the initial placement. It escaped into the raised bed last fall, and a month ago we dug the entire thing up, gaining a new 20 gallon potted bamboo with two 10'+ culms in the process. Both the potted division and the original plant that is now out on the hillside with the future 'bamboo forest' are really going wild. Both are already showing great rhizome growth, with the new division already trying to send two culms over the edge of it's pot, I think that I will let them run right into the bottom of another pot, and voila, another bamboo.

Point of this is that potting bamboo can give you great plant that can be moved easily, probably easier than a plant that has been spreading everywhere it likes, which could easily be over an area that would not be optimal for propagation.

Here's the plant after digging it up and cutting away the blue barrel:
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stevelau1911
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Re: Planting bamboos that will be sold/traded in the ground

Post by stevelau1911 »

Wow, that's pretty root-bound, but I like how big it can get despite being confined to that area which is just about as much as I expect my plants to spread out to next year.

I made sure I picked the ones that had rhizomes wrapping around the pot since they will be the soonest ones to go root-bound.
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I gave them enough spacing for 1 year of growth for all 7 of these plants. I might plant the rest if they show signs of producing rhizomes.
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Oregonbamboo
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Re: Planting bamboos that will be sold/traded in the ground

Post by Oregonbamboo »

Oh my gosh it's a whole lot easier keeping bamboo in pots if you plan to divide and sell. It's easier to divide and easier to control the environment (weather protection) to get the most out of it. Up to a point they grow just as well in a pot with the proper care than in the ground. Long term wise they grow much better in the ground but again you don't think long term if you plan to sell it. A big pot equals big bamboo and besides most people can't fit anymore than about a 10 foot plant in their car or truck. Anymore than that and you'll have to deliver it. Good luck!
AJ Williams
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stevelau1911
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Re: Planting bamboos that will be sold/traded in the ground

Post by stevelau1911 »

The primary reason that I put 20 of these in the ground was because the root balls were drying up in only 1 day and kept curling their leaves way too fast despite heavy watering so after I put them in the ground, and put a good layer of grass clippings on them, they didn't require daily watering. Moso seedlings have a lot of leaf surface and demand a lot of water, especially in the middle of summer.

I still have a few left, but when I dug them up, they did have a decent amount of rhizomes running in all directions usually at about 1/4 inch in diameter and traveling close to 1ft away so they were not that hard to dig out of the ground. I'm also not that worried about them running all over the place because this species doesn't seem to run very fast in zone 6.
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