Wow nice pictures. What are those bamboo looking plants that you have growing all around the house? Those look pretty impressive.

questions!

How old is the Moso grove? What variety of Moso? What soil and climatic conditions?

What species is the bamboo in the picture 'bamboopath904.jpg'? The one on the far right of the pic, I mean...

thanks so much
tami

I really like your garden it's beautiful, I love the wildness and lushness to it. I can only hope to have something like that one day.

If you don't mind me asking how old is your garden and how big is the property.

Beautiful!

Dan112, Those bamboo looking plants are moso bamboo (Phyllostachys pubescens), whose canes can get 90 feet high and 8 inches in diameter.

tamivaleine, this moso grove was planted in 1990 and is the 'Anderson' clone of moso. The soil is acid clay-loam. The climate in the summer is days average 88F high, nights 65F, RH remains above 90% with some rain received on most days except maybe once a week during a droughty summer. A typical mid-winter day is sunny, 50F high, 30F low, 3" max snowfall so far with practically no below freezing days. Mountains to the northwest block winter cold front winds. The species of bamboo in "bamboopath" is Yushania anceps 'pitt white'.

PuraVida, I started this garden in 1988 and it covers 1 acre.

Wow, that is really beautiful! I am just now planning an area of Moso bamboo. Any hints, from your experience, for getting them to grow big/quickly? I was thinking that, given a limited space, it would be best to plant just one plant, so that it can develop a big rhizome system and therefore grow biggest. Before I thought of this, I bought a 2-gallon Moso, but now I'm thinking maybe I should try to get the biggest rhizome chunk possible and plant it. Any thoughts? Also, is there anything that prevents the bamboo from spreading? Do you use barrier, or is there some sort of natural barrier, or do you have to keep it at bay by hand? Thanks-
Mark

The ideal sized moso transplant is a 2 year old, 1.5 to 2 inch diamter culm, topped above the 4th to 6th branched node, and with 3 feet of rhizome in the rootball. Fertilize with 1 to 2 inches of composted horse manure or a double handful of 14-14-14 per square yard. If using manure, fertilized once in the winter. With synthetic fertilizer, fertilize 1 month before shooting begins in the spring, then a secend equal fertilization in the summer once the new shoots have started leafing out. Keep well watered, especially through spring and summer droughts. The new shoots of well cared for moso in a good climate can gain an inch in diameter per year

I keep one of my moso groves contained by edging it with a transplanting shovel once a year in Oct. Another moso grove is surrounded by a gravel driveway where traffic keeps the soil compacted, which limits the spread of the rhizomes. The other moso groves I contain by harvesting any shoots coming up outside of the designated grove area. Of the running bamboos, moso is one of the easiest to contain since it only sends up a relatively small number of large shoots (compared with the zillions of tiny shoots sent up by some of the smaller runners).

Moso is a primitive running bamboo and stores the bulk of its energy in the culms (like a tropical clumper)instead of in the rhizomes, as with most other running bamboos. This allows you to grow monster culms in a very small area, since it doesn't need hundreds of feet of rhizome in place before it can produce a large diameter culm. This also makes it easy to remove from a location where it is not wanted. Clear cut the culms, and after 2 to 3 cycles of regrowth the rhizomes are depleted. This also means it will come back at a smaller size from a total winter topkill than will other running bamboos.

I added some more photos to the album. Its main page is at:

http://photobucket.com/albums/v417/MikeMariettaSC/

Mike:

The photos are really great. I especially like the shots of the Musa leaves that are backlit. Where in South Carolina do you garden? I am in Greenville.

Tom C.

Thanks for the excellent info on growing and containing Moso. I've been doing a lot of bamboo research and haven't come up with detailed info like that. I had been planning on putting in 3-ft barrier, but in a smaller area than I wanted, due to potential root damage to nearby trees. Now perhaps I won't put barrier around it, or only part way around. Perhaps I'll due the same with black bamboo as well, since it supposedly is not a rampant spreader (is this also due to storing energy in culms?). Another question, please: do you thin out your Moso to keep that nice spacing between the culms, or is it that way naturally? By the way, your Moso looks great in the snow, and I like seeing the other bamboos and tropicalia (word?) as well. Thanks for the extra pictures--they're so good I've bookmarked your site! Oh, yes, the ABS website lists the Anderson clone hardy to 6 degrees lower than the original, but no other differences. Does that sound right to you? I noticed that culms in some of your pictures have a pretty whitish powder on them--is that special to the Anderson clone? Or is that the 'hair'/'fuzz' that contributes to the Chinese/Japanese name of the bamboo? (I think Jap. 'moso' = Chi. 'mao zhu' = 'hairy/fuzzy bamboo'.)

Tmxina, my garden in located north of Greenville near Jones Gap State Park at the base of the Blue Wall near the NC/SC state line.

Mark, black bamboo is a dwarfed, black culm garden form. Its parent is the green culmed, wild type form, the 65 feet high, 4 inch diameter Phyllostachys nigra henon. Black bamboo stores its energy in the rhizomes and in my garden it is moderately invasive for a running bamboo. I don't thin out the moso culms to maintain the open spacing, that is how the plant grows naturally. I thin out the older (5+ year old) culms, but that is it. Anderson moso is the cold hardiest known and tested clone of moso in this country since it has been in this country since 1912. The moso clones grown from seed (available in this country since 1980) can vary in cold hardiness depending on the where within the native range of moso in China the seed was collected. I'm sure that eventually other cold hardy clones will found among the seedling clones. Compared with a mature sized seedling clone that I am growing here, Anderson moso shoots about 2 weeks later and is 10F cold hardier. The less cold hardy clones are likely to be from the southern part of the moso native range in China and would be the preferred clone for those growing moso in the deep south and northern FL. That "whitish powder" is found on one year old culms and is the peachfuzz that moso (Japanese for "hairy") is scientific moniker "pubescens. This peachfuzz is lost on older culms.

I also have a lot of citrus and eucalytus in the garden, that haven't taken many pictures of, since these small leaved trees tend to get lost when photographed againt a background of the small leaved mountain laurels (Kalmia) native on the property.

Thanks for the excellent info again, Mike! (I'm not even going to ask how you grow citrus, after seeing pictures of your snow-covered garden...)

I added some photos of some of my citrus (citranges and manderins)to the series.

Outstanding garden! Thanks so much for the information and pictures.

Very nice! It's great to see tropical trees and plants growing up north. Great photo work too.

Tamara