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How best to remove a 20 yr old plot of running bamboo?
Fire
Posts: 19,096
A neighbour has recently bought an Edwardian terraced house with running bamboo in
the front garden - an enclosed plot of about 3mx3m. The bamboo might have been there for 20
years, erupting through the next door's garden concrete and through the
street pavement in front. Previous efforts by the previous owner at containing and chemical control failed.
How
would you deal with the removal? It's everywhere through the plot, even
though other plants are having a go at co-living. I suggested the owner
may be dig a pit to get a sense of how deep the roots might go, but
that might be hard with a mat of solid root through clay. If little
pieces are left, is there a chance it will regrow?
I
imagine that if there is a way to kill JKW with Round Up, skills and
time, it should be possible to kill bamboo that way, if you know what
you're doing...? The front garden is too small to get much in the way of mechanical material in. My thought is to try and remove all whole plot to some depth and start the garden again, though there will have to be efforts to deal with the boundary where it's going next door.
It would be interesting to hear from people who have done a whole scale removal of running bamboo at depth. Also to hear what the recover has been like.
0
Posts
My husband dug down outside the root-run to expose the site. It wasn't actually very deep. Then, with spade, fork and pick-axe he just worked his way in, taking it out chunk by chunk. It fought back all the way.
We had one or two points of regrowth but they were easy to deal with. I really think you need a very strong, fit person for this job because the mat of roots was very dense and tough.
I thought the roots would go deep but they were more interested in going outwards to take over the planet.
It'll kill all of it.
Use on a calm day and set the spray to small droplets, not a fine mist that will blow it onto plants you may not want to kill.
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
I think they only send up canes ones a year and I've seen people just keep removing these new canes when they pop up in places you don't want. Doing this will kill it eventually.
They tried. It didn't.
Once dead the whole plant rots away quite quickly and the glyphosate is broken down on contact with the soil.
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
But, commercial strength is best for a tough job
I had a clump of bamboo in a corner and it spread into my neighbour's garden so it had to go.
I used Rosate36
Billericay - Essex
Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.
Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.
It was not as difficult as I expected, I found it had a natural barrier, an old tree root fairly near the surface.
The culms are now inside in a large pot they look amazing so all is not lost . I have cleared the area and plan to leave the old tree root. Had a bag of soil based compost and that has been mixed into the soil which was dry and spent. I have ordered Fargesia Jiuzhaigou 1. Hopefully I am ready to go. Thank you to everyone who has helped me, I had no idea that Black Bamboo was Leptomorphic.