Can't imagine what would be 12 feet tall and 2-4 inches in diameter! Perhaps some vivax that someone has already chain sawed down to a few feet. My advice would be to take a VERY STURDY shovel, an axe, and a carpenter's saw, just in case. I once cut through bamboo root with a chainsaw because that was the only way to do it. I had planted it in a 6X2.5 foot (custom made wooden) planter box 2.5 feet deep, and the roots had invaded every inch of soil in 5 years. And sure, if you have to cut somebody in half, it really won't kill them. You could probably throw in a stick of dynamite, and still get something home alive. Whether or not to wrap the rootball probably depends on how hot it is, but I've seen people be very rough with bamboo roots with no ill effects. You can't really kill it with a stick. It just laughs at you and goes on living.

"6 to 12' tall and 2 to 4 inches in diameter"

either you have your numbers wrong, or it's not bamboo.

2" bamboo would be 40+ ft tall,
4" bamboo would be 60+ ft tall

12 ft tall bamboo would be way under 1" diam.

1. yes, leave at least 1 or 2 nodes' complete foliage, the rest can come off

2. 60 mph winds could really rip the leaves up and/or off, so you should wrap the foliage. wrapping the root ball is more for retaining the dirt rather than preventing drying in such a short period.

3. you should get a least 2 culms + rootball per "field division"

See my sub-album of how I transplanted a Ph. aurea last December. The transplant survived and has put a bunch of floppy culms and whipshoots this summer, to grab some energy to build the rhizomes. I expect real culms next spring.

http://photobucket.com/albums/v501/bamboozool/bamboo_transplanting/

Meat, sorry to reply like a wet blanket, but it does indeed sound like the diameter is being way overestimated or the plants may not be bamboo. Ask the owner to describe the leaves. I am afraid that she may describe them as heart shaped or like a spade on a playing card. If so, ask her about the white flowers, have they come out yet?

I hope I am wrong and that this is indeed bamboo. If so, here is a link on digging your own bamboo.

http://www.needmorebamboo.com/digging.html

meat-
I've emailed you some instructions on digging...

Thank you for all of your replies I am glad to see how active this place is. I will assume for the time being that the womans husband explained the length and diameter of the plants :P I will post pictures of them tommorow. I also have some black and blue bamboo seed coming from ebay how will they do in my zone?

meat-
By "black" I assume you mean Ph. nigra, although I'm not aware of any black bamboo flowerings. "Blue" could be a number of things. Do you have the proper names for these? You can check out hardiness ratings for your bamboo at a number of sites, including www.bambooweb.info, where you'll find pictures organized alphabetically by scientific name, and hardiness data when you click on the thumbnail for a particular species.

doh sorry i hadnt had my coffee yet when i typed that .
Phyllostachys nigra 'Henon
and
Phyllostachys nigra
as i said forgive me I am a noob in all of this but am very interested in it. I have always loved bamboo . I just never thought it would grow around here until a few weeks ago i saw some growing down the road.

Man i'm glad i have overcome my bamboo addiction cause you guys spend way to much time here trying to understand bamboo. Use some common sense. runner runs ,clumper clumps. Product of its enviroment, water, temp, soil, sun ect. Good reading here but again there are other things that need your attention. Did I say that?

Jake-
You must have been talking to my wife, right?

man, I thought just my wife was that way :S

exept she always finish the sentence with .. others thing to do like fix the kitchen, fix the garage door, etc.

I went yesterdsay I dug up 10 plants most of them were in groups of two or 3 plants therer were two however that were ponly one plant divisions. The lady had at least 500 plants. My understanding was that the elderly lady they purchased their house from had planted only 4 plants 4 or 5 years ago. Most of the plants were 12 to 25 feet tall it was beautiful.I dug up the divisions leaving a rather large area of the root ball attached and placed them in plastic bags and then I gut each plant down to roughly 8 feet. Before leaving i filled each of the bags with wate. When we got home the leaves were begining to roll up in tight rolls. I read on here somehwere that was due to needing water. I laid them all out oin the yard and placed a sprinkler on them thye all unrolled and lok to be very healthy now. I will post pictures of the plants later today for identification. I wanted to thank everyone for their input and for these great forums.

Good luck and keep on growing bamboo.

Ok I finalloy have pictures of the plants and would be very touched if you guys could help me identify the type of bamboo I have.

Here is a link that might be useful: {{gwi:423643}}

well I have spent a good part of the morning trying to find it and cannot seem to find what it is yet.

Meat, trying to ID a green Phyllostachys from the culms is guesswork. Although Nuda should be more common than most other green Phys. my guesswork suggests Bissetii. If the culms were many, and close together forming a dense screen, then I stick with the Bissetii. In 4 years Bissetii should be the size of these and the screening effect should be quite established.

Really, you'll have to wait until they send up a few shoots to get a firmer ID, possibly within the next 2-4 weeks, as larger divisions tend to shoot shortly after digging.

I'm glad it is real bamboo!

if you change the image name in the link to 1 and also 2 there are othe rpictures of the plant. i was undure what i should take a photograph of.

meat-
A very nice looking clump, but, as hoosier52 says, it's hard to identify a green bamboo from only the culms. One other thing. I'm sorry to say this, but that bamboo looks like it's planted pretty far into that corner. I'm thinking if you leave it there it's really going to look squeezed in a year or two. Also, if you intend to control it by rhizome pruning, you haven't given yourself much room, unless you have easy access to the other sides of that fence. I'm not trying to discourage you...just imparting some info I learned the hard way. Good luck. You've got a great start there.

That is a picture of 3 of the 10 plants I picked up. The angle is a little off on the picture there is about 2 feet between the boo and the fence also there is a pretty solid brick barrier on the backside between the plants and the fence so my hope is the rizomes will deflect back towards the yard if not i am on a corner lot and the fence is agains the sidewalk so i have tons oc access to the other side. I have a ph.nigra coming htis week I also have 20 or so moso seeds coming. I have been trying to find hennon and nigra seeds but they all seem to be gone off of ebay :(. I was excited this morning I went out sat on my patio withg all the bamboo and my two new red flowering plum trees all the birds chirping. I had a nice cup of coffee and actually got to smile before coming to work :). I did notice howerver the one 2 plants that I did not cut down seem to be bending over a bit at the top. one is roughly 10' tall the other 15'. Both it seems the top foot or so is bending over. I have been wattering them each day is there anything else I should be doing. oh yah I also have them mulched with pine mulch.

meat-
Even with all the digging I've done, field divisions are always a crap shoot for me. I've had 10' tall nigra where I've lost all the culms (although the rootball survived) and I've had 25' tall Allgold that I didn't top, and it never blinked...put up two new culms two months after I transplanted it. So...I think you're probably ok with what you're doing. You may get some loss, but it's not necessarily preventable. Mulch deeply this fall, and keep smiling.

works for me i have one plant right now that is haivng some issues i will post pics of it but all looks pretty good so far.

meat,

I'm jealous. I started growing in 2003 and it will be a year or two before I see culms like that. I'd also agree with kudzu9 about the fence....Hope what/who ever is on the other side of the fence isn't going to mind having bamboo too.
- Rick

im hoping it spreads under the fence and too the left. I had 12 ' tall hedges there and it looks like crap since I took them out. plus on that side there is a giant marble slab to hold it in that way.

I can't see anything that you are doing wrong. Afterall in 3 or 4 years you are not going to be able to see a damn thing other than bamboo anyway.

hi i just got sum bamboo from georgia on a army base i dug it up but couldnt get it in water right a way but i did 4 hrs later when i got home in fl an put them in a pot with reg dirt an mir grow soil an water them then i had to go back to georgia then next day well they didnt get water for three days but the soil was still moist when i got back but they look dry was wounder if i probaly lost them theres a couple diff sizes ones bout 8ft an the rest are smaller im still watering but im wounder if there gone

What time of year is best to transplant? I have a friend willing to give me some nice plants from his grove, but not sure what season is appropriate.

umpire78-
Usually the best time to take a division is when the plant is relatively dormant...maybe Oct through March. However, the best way to proceed is dependent on what Zone you're in and what your winter weather is like. If you provide that info, I'll give you more specific advice.

And potted up a big piece in a 20 gallon container two days ago and the leaves have all rolled up; it doesn't look good. I didn't trim any of the canopy; am thinking I should have. Any advice on what I can do to save this big clump would be welcome.

Also, I had to send the rest of the plant to the dump because I can't seem to find someone to take my bamboos. In fact I have a second larger clump that has also grown too large for it's spot and I'm going to have the same problem. Any ideas on how to a home for this beauty would be good.

echolane-
What species of bamboo? How tall is it? How big was the rootball? Were you able to leave the roots relatively undisturbed? Are the leaves just curled up, or have they dried up and died?

I bought a 5 gallon black bamboo in August this year and it has since lost some leaves. It is 7 feet tall now and quite root bound. Two rhizomes are pointing down.I decided to repot the plant 2 days ago. I build an 18 inch square redwood planter 14 inch depth. The size is approx 20 gallons in volume. I then cut some two pieces of Styrofoam to insulate east/south side of planter. I drilled a 1/2 inch hole in center and 2 1/4 inch hole in corners. I used 2 pieces of black plastic sheets to fit in the planter.
I placed the planter on a corner of my yard where it receives 5 hours of sunlight. Then I leveled the planter.

I put an inch of gravel on bottom and filled rest with planting mix (80%), garden soil (15%) and sands (5%). I cut two pieces of rhizomes short because they are pointing down.

Has any one cut the rhizomes short ?