Earth Day: spent it fighting nature :)
April 22, 2007 We planted a 60' (almost 20 meters) trench of bamboo in our back yard in May of 2005 - two years ago (May '05 post, Apr '06 post). I need to post a current pic! When we planted it, Ben and I dug a trench, 18" deep by 18" wide by 60' long (about .5 meters deep and wide, and 20 meters long). We lined the trench sides with galvanized steel roof flashing, to keep the bamboo from spreading beyond the trench.
Or so we thought.
There were a couple of spots where we overlapped the roof flashing, since it wasn't long enough to circle the inside of the trench with a single piece. I overlapped the flashing about a foot in each spot, but did not seal it. DOH! This week we discovered a bamboo Prison Break! On one side (the side closest to the pool), the bamboo had found the seam and sent 4 or 5 runners through the seam and 20' (6+ meters) across our yard. Yikes! On the other side - closest to the fence - an intrepid runner had managed to get over the top of the steel and then proceed a couple of meters diagonally away from the trench. On the OUTSIDE of the fence, we discovered a couple of shoots - one of them a couple of meters tall!
Well, fortunately, it's not that hard to take care of this when one catches it early. For the runner that had hopped over the steel, I simply snipped it and pulled it up. During this time of year when the bamboo sends its runners, we'll make it a habit to check every day or two for escapees. For the runners that had found the seam, we cut the runners (back inside the trenched area and before the seam), pulled up the runners from the back yard (ok, Shirley dug them up ...down a few inches below the surface), and I dug around the seam, removed the now-severed runners, and sealed it with JB Weld ...which is, by the way, one of the true wonders of the world.
The moral for anyone planting bamboo ...DO put a barrier around the planting area if you are planting a running bamboo ...and DO seal the seams!!!
Florida
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