Should bamboo watering schedule change with the seasons?

A customer from Winter Park, FL wrote to ask about winter watering needs for bamboo:

Now that winter is still with us, yet changing into something like Spring over the next few days, should we adjust our winter watering schedule? We have restrictions at this time of year: once a week is the city limit. Yet I could go out and give each bamboo clump, say, a gallon or two a day if you advised. Most of the bambusa chungii still have green leaves, but on a number of these leaves the tips are brown. I'm thinking that is a seasonal thing, but maybe you will say more water is needed. I'm also planning to put Black Kow around each clump later this week.

My response:
Soil conditions, fertilizer and water are the 3 key ingredients needed to make large, healthy bamboo plants.  

Clumping bamboos send up new shoots during the warm months and those shoots will be a larger diameter and taller if they are growing in rich, well-irrigated soil.  Adding compost, manure, grass clippings or any other organic matter as a top dressing around existing plants is always beneficial in any season.  As it rains or when the bamboos are watered, the nutrients from the top dressing leaches into the subsoil to be absorbed by the roots.  

If water restrictions limits watering to once a week any additional hand watering will help.  The more you water, the sooner new shoots will emerge.  But don't worry if you can't do that.  Bamboos can handle minimal watering, they just grow faster and get bigger sooner if they are more frequently irrigated.  

The browning on the tips of the Bambusa chungii (Blue Timber) is, as you suspected, just a natural part of the winter season.  Bamboo leaves die and fall to the ground all year long but it seems to happen more so in the winter.  The brown tips are not a sign that your plants are lacking in water or are nutrient deficient.  It just signals a transition time from one season to the next.  


Keep your eyes open for new shoots on the Bambusa chungii.  Just within the last few days I've noticed new shoots emerge on the Blue Timber bamboos that we planted last year.

How to control weeds in the bamboo

A customer wrote: 

We bought a Vivax and a Blue from you last fall. Both came through the winter with no damage and have already sent up bunches of new canes this spring. They are so pretty and so much fun. Every day, we go look just to see what's new!

 

What do you recommend for weed control around the bases of bamboo?

 

I recall that you planted ground cover plants around some of your clumps. What plants work well?

 

But I think most of your clumps were weed-free without a ground cover. Do you use a herbicide?

 

Would a 0.5-1% glyphosate spray hurt them if I removed the leaves that might get spray on them first? I would have guessed that, being grasses, they'd be sensitive but I gather from reading on the web that it's actually pretty hard to kill them with glyphosate.

 

I've looked around on your web site but didn't find any discussion of weed control. If it's there, please just point me to it.

 

My response:

I'm glad to hear that your plants are doing so well.  If you have time, email me some pictures.  I'd love to see them.

For weed control we recommend a heavy mulch.  Weed by hand any obvious weeds then apply as deep a mulch as you can around the bamboo.  You can use any type of natural mulch - leaves, wood bark, etc.  To make the mulch extra impervious to weeds, you can apply a thick layer of newspaper first and then mulch on top of them.  Unlike with trees, mulches can go right up around the base of the canes without worry or harm to the plants.

We don't use any herbicides at the nursery and don't recommend using them at home.  Bamboo is just a giant grass and although herbicides won't kill the bamboo, it won't do them any good either.  If you want to use a ground cover, I've found the following plants work well:  wedelia, ruellia and wandering jew.  Any other shade-loving ground cover would work as well.

Wedelia growing as a ground cover beneath a grove of Vivax running bamboo

Bamboo Q & A

A customer from the Orlando area who recently purchased and installed several Blue Timber (Bambusa chungii) clumping bamboos wrote with a few questions:

Hi Sherry,  How are you?  I hope this finds you doing well.  I am writing to ask some specific questions about our Bambusa chungii that arose after reading your wonderful blog. I find myself going back to your blog almost daily to look up something or read what you’ve written about a particular topic. 

OK.  First off, irrigation.  As you may recall, we purchased 5 Bambusa chungii from you. They are now integrated into our driveway landscape, placed about 10’ apart.  I have redone the irrigation system for this area, using a drip line with two dedicated lines for each plant (well, one has a line and a nearby spray head).  I have placed two of these micro-bubbler irrigation heads about an inch from the vertical culm of each bamboo: http://www.amazon.com/Orbit-Irrigation-67110-Micro-Bubbler-Stake/dp/B002R9O4OK.  This way when I turn on the sprinkler system, each plant gets a dedicated shower with a specific radius range of about a foot from the base of the vertical culm.  I have also added mulch around each plant.  We have a lot of oak trees here, so we have leaves galore.

OK, on your blog I read a comment from someone asking about newly planted bamboos and this person mentioned watering each bamboo for 2 hours.  Wow, that seems like a lot.  I turn on the bamboo zone for 10-12 minutes twice a day, then twice a week in addition that zone is part of our overall watering schedule (in Winter Park you can water two days a week) and the bamboo zone goes on for 25 minutes.  All the bambusa chungii now have leaves sprouting from the joints of each culm.  On all but one plant the leaves have no yellow; one of the tallest bamboos has some yellow leaves.  There are no curling leaves (indicating lack of water).  Yet, still I wonder … am I under-watering?  Do they need more than this?  Please advise.

Next, fertilizing.  As you may recall, we got both soil and Dynamite from you which were put into the planting as you direct in your planting instructions sheet.  Some bamboos have been in the ground for 3 weeks now, some about a week.  So soon (the one-month mark) I was going to add fertilizer.  My local hardware store has been having trouble getting Ironite http://www.ironite.com/.  They told me that Ironite has re-formulated the mix and it is now hard to get.  Not sure when they will have the Ironite.  So … I can use something like this:  http://www.seedland.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=Seedland&Product_Code=FERT-423403-15&Category_Code=FERT-453284.

Should I use both, assuming that Ironite becomes available soon?  Can I start fertilizing after the 4-week mark?

Thanks again for all your good information.  It’s fun to check in with Beautiful Bamboo by listening to other people’s questions and thoughts.  Thanks too for your excellent comments on Metalifestream. 

My response:

Hi Barry - I'm glad you are finding my blog helpful.  Have you used the "Search this Blog" feature yet?  If not, you might find that useful when seeking out information on specific topics.  Concerning your questions, let's start with irrigation.  From your description of the plants' new leaves, it sounds like you are giving them adequate water.  Bamboos like water and it is difficult to give them too much but the amount you are doing seems perfectly fine for plants in a shady, well-mulched location like you've given them.  Especially during this year's rather moist springtime.

Concerning the fertilizer, you already applied sufficient fertilizer to last 6 months when you planted the bamboo and used Dynamite, a 6-mo. time release fertilizer that we sell at the nursery.  The fertilizer you linked to would be a good choice for the future but not necessary for immediate use.  If you use the one you linked to in the future, you can apply it every month since it is not a time release formula but be sure to follow the application directions since regular non-time release formulas do have the potential to "burn" plants if applied incorrectly.  What you can always do however, is apply organic material around the existing bamboos.  Just like with water, bamboos thrive when given an abundance of organic material such as compost, manure, grass clippings, leaves, etc.  So right now, don't apply additional chemical fertilizers but do pile on the organic matter.

Ironite is usually available at Lowes, although I haven't checked recently.  Newly planted bamboos usually don't require Ironite applications.  Some browning of the leaves is normal, especially following transplanting, and as long as new leaves are forming, don't worry about others leaves that fall off.  Focus instead on all the new growth that's just beginning to happen now and will continue to happen through November.

How much is too much fertilizer and mulch?

A customer in Orlando asks:
I’ve been reluctant to put down a lot of pine bark so as not to interfere with new canes coming up. Am I being too careful? Inasmuch as I planted the bamboo November 1, am I being too careful in waiting til May 1 to apply Dynamite again? I don’t want to over-fertilize.

My response:
About the Dynamite, there's no need to fertilize again until May since the beauty of a time-release formula is that it emits a slow but steady amount of fertilizer over a six month period. As for the mulch, you can place a light mulch around the plants at any time. The new shoots will push through the mulch with no trouble. As the plants mature, you can add a thicker coverage. Mulches help plants retain moisture while reducing competition from weeds and adding some nutrients to the soil.