Bamboo Planting

Now that my vacation is over, I'm sitting down to blog about some of my adventures in the yard during my time off. Last week and the week before I worked on planting the bamboo. All in all it took me about 2 1/2 days. I thought it would take me longer, so I'm very pleased.

First, I started with mapping out where I'd put the beds:



I had 3 plants to put in: 1 golden bamboo and 2 bissettii. I mapped out a roughly 6' x 8' area for the golden bamboo, and a 30' x 6' spot for the 2 bissettii. Then I broke out the mantis and tilled the grass under until the ground was nice and soft and diggable. This also makes sure that the grass won't come back right away, and by the time it tries, hopefully some of the bamboo will have filled in by then and I won't have to weed as much.

Once I prepared the soil, I began digging a trench about 3 feet deep around the perimeter of the two planting areas. As I dug, I put in the rhizome barrier that is supposed to help keep the bamboo contained. This barrier is made from durable polyethylene. From what I've read, it's not a sure-fire, 100% way to keep the bamboo in, in that you still need to keep an eye out for rhizomes that sneak out over the barrier, but it does a pretty good job.

Digging is hard, dirty work. But it was fun, and quite meditative. On the days that I spent digging, I'd get up and have a nice breakfast (usually oatmeal with soymilk or peanut butter/jam toast and chinese black tea - yum!). Then I'd get into my gardening clothes, put on my Sloggers (rubber garden clogs) and gloves. Then I'd just set to work digging the trench. It seemed to take forever, but after a while I'd settle into a nice rhythm. Before I knew it I'd be thnking about this 'n that and the time would fly.

Here's the bamboo all planted up and happy:



Next thing is to figure out how to cover up the black barrier that's poking up. Do I use soil or rock and mound it up? Or do I plant something low-growing and evergreen? Or do I put up some fence-type edging?