Bamboozled

Never look a gift bamboo in the mouth.
Even if the "gift"requires two days of butt-busting work.

This is our haul from last week's bamboo expedition. That truck load represents hours of hot, sweaty, manual labor that included digging, hacking, sawing, and toting.
The bamboodinous bounty came to us by word of mouth. A friend of a friend had more bamboo than he knew what to do with and was willing to give some away.
And it wasn't that wimpy hedge bamboo, it was timber boo! The giant stuff!

Now, I love bamboo. Yes, yes, I know some types spread like crazy, ... I know that! Okay?
So no need to warn me about it taking over. I can handle a giant grass with attitude.
The problem with giant timber type bamboo is ... I can't afford it. So when this guy offered some for free... " Just come dig it up." ... I was not about to let that go by.

We wound up in the middle of Gainesville, on a three acre yard that had so much beauty and variety in the plantings ... you didn't know where to look next. It was literally a green oasis in the heart of the city.
The homeowner was very kind and walked us around pointing out the various types of bamboo growing in thick thickets ... that's redundant isn't it? Thickets are thick by the very fact of being a thicket.
When he had shown it all to us, he left us with a "Have at it!", and we did.


For about 3 hours, we dug, chopped, and pulled bamboo rootballs from the ground. The plants themselves were probably 40 feet tall at least, so we had to cut the culms off. We couldn't very well drive through Gatortown with trees hanging out the back of the truck.
The white trash bags are protecting the roots from drying out on the living bamboo plants. Beneath them are the cut pieces of bamboo that we brought home to dry out for whatever crafty thing we think of.

We got home after dark. I hosed down the bamboo and left it overnight. The next morning, I got up and started digging again ... this time in MY yard. Another couple of hours went in to digging and planting the boo.


I have some existing bamboo that I purchased long ago and it was nothing more than a bare stick when I bought it, so I'm hoping we got enough of a root ball on these culms to survive and grow.
In the picture above, one of the plants is waiting it's turn to be planted.


All the literature says that good watering is the secret to getting bamboo plants over the shock of transplanting, so I saturated each of the planting holes by letting the hose run until the hole was full.

I also planted them together and convenient to a hose, so I could water them each day if needed.

Ideally, the rock hard stump from the old horsey swing turkey oak will someday be invisible in a thicket of bamboo.

It will be a long time before I know if any of these rootballs survived the shock and are growing. I'm hoping for the best, but if even one makes it, I will be totally stoked.