transplanting and moving bamboo?

[Keith of Ronin]

i have some friends that will let me dig up and take some of their bamboo, i think it is golden and black, how do i go about taking them?
they are all about 20 to 30 feet tall, so do i have to cut the tops off?
how do i cut them away from the other roots?

would it be ok to pot them before i plant them or should i just plant them in the ground, i have an area of 100' by 30' that i have been preparing to plant them and it is not yet ready, but they said i can take them now!

how often watered when in pots and when planted
should i water them before digging them out?

any info would be a great help,

thankyou
Keith

[tharlow]

Here is a link on how to dig bamboo. It has good pictures and instructions.

Dividing and digging temperate bamboo (http://needmorebamboo.com/digging.html)

I hope it helps,

Tom

[bamboogirl]

Hello

This is not the best time to dig them up.but like you i had a rare chance of digging up free plants now or none.i chose to dig,,one should really wait till after there yearly growing time..id prefere to wait till sept or oct after there mostly thru growing...id look at the outside of the grove for young ones that you don't have to cut and can carry/haul...mostly up to 15' tall....

if your not ready go ahead and put in pots or as i prefere old wood whisky barrel halves temperly till your ready...make sure there is a hole on the bottom

you want as big a rhizome as possable for the bigger it is the bigger and faster it will be sooner....do you know what kind it is? are you prepared for it to be invasive should it be a runner?

[Mark Meckes]

Here's a photo of a couple 25 ft+ Phyllostachys aurea, dug in early spring, balled and burlapped, branches tied back and ready for the trip to a new home.
http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/data/517/thumbs/PaureaB_B-787.jpg See larger and other pics (http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/showphoto.php?photo=1162)
Phyllostachys aurea - Austin TX USA
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side note...
I've got some pics from days gone by when I used to do this sort of thing for a supplemental living, It'll take a while, in between other things, just to find them, but what I'll do is upload them into the Growing Bamboo (http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/showgallery.php?cat=517) photo category in Bamboo Flora as they turn up, and rearrange them into albums and add notes later on.
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Keith,
Does the owner want them removed NOW?
Go dig them out any way you can!

(I'll put together some notes and pics on tools and techniques that I've used. Let me know if this is a rush job.)

Or do you have some time to prepare and move them?

Digging conditions ...
Is the soil rocky, gravely, sandy, clay etc, where they are growing?
Are there other trees (with big roots) growing with the bamboo?

These things affect the quality of the root ball and number of culms and amount of top growth that can be successfully transplanted.

Mark

[Keith of Ronin]

i had a couple of different people tell me i was allowed to take some of their bamboo, some take it now, some when ever.

my area to plant them is now ready, it is about 300 feet away from my house, so i ran 380' of 3/4 poly line out to them with sprinkler heads and made sure to have the heads about a foot or two above ground to spray a good enough area(took me a long time to dig by hand). How often should i be watering them? and i am using other tree leaves as mulch, is that ok?

and i have been having trouble with squirrels each time a new shoot starts to come up between 1' to 5' they end up chewing them in half, i have put three rolls of barbed wire around the area and 2 boxes of moth balls(not sure if they will hurt the bamboo though)

i am hoping they will spread so i wont have to keep digging them up in different places and planting them, i was hoping they would take up a fifty by one hundred foot area

oh i little off topic
i have some on the side of my house too, that i planted last september, and found 15 new shoots coming up and growing, they are planted in a concrete barrier, kind of like a big 3' by 2' by 20' pot. which i am happy they are growing

would it be ok to plant different types of bamboo together and the far back area? or should the be spaced? and how is internet ordering or ebay ordering of these plants?

i will post a picture of the area soon,
thanks
Keith

[bamboogirl]

hello
ok .first off i don't know what type of bamboo you transplanted.?? id use 1"chicken wire around my precious (moso)bamboo.to keep deer ets away and so far it has..squirels should i see them around my bamboo will be history.most of the shooting culms is over i think in this area..i assume you planted a runner type...give it time and it will spead...
first it sleeps,second it creeps,third it leaps..

as far as i go i DO NOT want my different bamboo types to grow togther.i want them seperate

[bamboogirl]

one last thing
id not buy bamboo on e bay.....go to the bambooweb.info and look for vendors there or the ABS list

[Mark Meckes]

Hi Keith, time flies!
Hows your bamboo doing?
How was the digging of the bamboo?
Did you get a good chunk of dirt and rhizomes with the transplants?
A there still a good number of leaves remaining on the branches?

See new category at Gallery Bamboo Flora ...
http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/data/655/thumbs/DiggingTools-703.jpg Bamboo Digging Tools (http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/showgallery.php?cat=655)

See the gallery category Growing Bamboo (http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/showgallery.php?cat=517) for pics about digging up bamboo.

... i have been having trouble with squirrels each time a new shoot starts to come up between 1' to 5' they end up chewing them in half.
Did you see definite chew marks like this?
http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/data/518/thumbs/SquirellsS-fastuosaAuTX050517-366.jpg See photo (http://www.bamboocraft.net/bamboo/showphoto.php?photo=1063)

See thread: Squirells eating my bamboo shoots!
(http://www.bamboocraft.net/forums/showthread.php?t=1300)

If the culms snapped off at a node and were easy to break apart, then this may have been from the bamboo not having enough energy to sustain all the new shoots.

Re: Planting different species of bamboo together ...
I love it! ... but there's so much to discuss about this it deserves it's own thread! ;)

Mark