Trying different species indoors

Document your results with different mulches, seeds, mutations, TC or other experiments.

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Rufledt
Posts: 191
Joined: Wed Nov 02, 2011 4:35 am
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Location: South WI

Trying different species indoors

Post by Rufledt »

I've grown japonica, Bambusa multplex, and a couple pleioblastus bamboos indoors successfully, but I want to see how other species can handle it. To that end, i'm experimenting with this one:
20181017_191138.jpg
It's a 1 gallon Sasamorpha borealis I bought this year. I emailed Bamboo Garden (where I bought it) and someone there said she doesn't think borealis requires a dormancy period. I think this is my only current bamboo that doesn't require hibernation except for Pleioblastus viridistriatus. I also have one of those growing indoors, but that's more of a normal indoor species.

The leaves on my borealis plant look like this:
20181017_191144.jpg
Pretty healthy, currently pushing out a few new leaves. I stuck it in a larger pot (somewhere between 3 to 5 gallons in size) when I got it a couple months ago. The soil in a mix of potting soil and coconut coir, and I had been fertilizing now and then with Neptune's Harvest, a low NPK fish/seaweed emulsion fertilizer, and at one point I fertilized with a high nitrogen grass fertilizer. I don't like using that stuff very often, though, as i'm afraid of burning the leaves, while I have never managed to overfertilize with neptune's harvest by sticking to the directions.

I'm keeping the plant in a room with a 400 watt metal halide light and a few 50 watt daylight spectrum LED lamps. I plan to mist the borealis daily, keep the soil damp, etc... I'm just going to treat it like any other bamboo and see what happens. This is the same set up I use to overwinter my titan arums and a pepper plant that i've had for a few years. I don't know how those compare to bamboo for tolerating indoor conditions, but none of those have died over the last couple winters (i put them outside for the summer).

The house has central air, gets kinda dry in here, that may be a problem, but time will tell I guess.

Anyone have suggestions for other species to try in the future or any tips? I'd like to get someone unusual like walking cane bamboo or something tropical and see what happens if Sasamorpha borealis survives. I planned to get another japonica or Phyllostachys aurea to mess around with over winter but that didn't pan out, hopefully borealis takes to it well.
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