Some bamboo pics

Connie and I took a walk the other day and I had my Panasonic Lumix with me. Took some pics of a couple of the bamboo groves.

I think a lot of small animals use the bamboo in one way or another. Birds building nests at the top of the bamboo would likely be completely safe from predators as they could not climb up those poles to get at the eggs or young.

Looks like some birds have created nesting cavities in some of the bamboo using a more direct route, and I'm sure lizards and tree frogs will hole up in the old split bamboo.

So cool! I wish we could grow bamboo around here. I doubt they would survive Ohio winters.

Dragonling said:

So cool! I wish we could grow bamboo around here. I doubt they would survive Ohio winters.

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You might be surprised....

http://www.bamboogarden.com/cold hardy bamboo.html

There's a bamboo nursery in Punta Gorda. I think it's right off Burnt Store Road. I never stopped in since my lot is small and I don't have much room for bamboo. But I heard that they have awesome varieties. Have you ever been there?

Twolunger said:

There's a bamboo nursery in Punta Gorda. I think it's right off Burnt Store Road. I never stopped in since my lot is small and I don't have much room for bamboo. But I heard that they have awesome varieties. Have you ever been there?

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Not that I can recall.

Even with a small lot you could get some pretty impressive clumping types of bamboo that do not spread rapidly, yet still get quite large culms on them.

I've got a few clumping types planted here, one of which is actually getting some size to it since it overwintered very well the past couple of years. If it can reach it's full potential, it will get VERY large, as the guy I bought it from in Tampa had some enormous culms in his back yard.

There are some smaller clumping types in the Bambusa multiplex family that don't get real big, but will make great visual barriers if you plant the individual plants fairly close together. We have two sections here which haven't hardly spread at all since we put them in the ground around 20 years ago.

My brother said they sell some clumping varieties that don't spread and don't get too tall. I think I'll concentrate on a tangerine first. I'm getting old and want to be around to taste the first fruit. LOL.

I wish my neighbor had planted that kind! He planted some super-thick relatively small running bamboo, which invades my hard. Makes a great year-round privacy screen. The dogs love playing with stalks.

Rich, I know I've asked you this before; have you been to kanapaha to see the bamboo??

For those who grew up in the north it is a real learning curve to decide what to plant down here. There's what is called a " learning garden " in my area that has many flowers, bushes, and trees planted along with their common and scientific names. I saw a beautiful flowering succulent growing there and noticed one seedling growing in the stone walkway so plucked it out and brought it home. It grew and flowered the second year and produced thousands of seeds, all of which sprouted. I've been plucking them out, spraying them with weed killer, and they still keep coming. I've found them growing on the vacant lot next to me, so have been spraying them too. My wife said if I hadn't tried saving that seedling none of this would have happened. LOL.

Nanci said:

Rich, I know I've asked you this before; have you been to kanapaha to see the bamboo??

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Yes been there a couple of times but quite a long time ago. Bought some of the black bamboo from them, but it's not doing too well. I think it is just too warm here for it to thrive well. I also tried several sections of the Moso bamboo, but none of them survived. One started off doing real well, but in a few years just went downhill rapidly.

I also bought the "crookstem" bamboo from them, if I recall correctly. It is doing real well, and got larger than I expected it to.

BTW, the BIG bamboo in my photos is Phyllostachys vivax. The yellow bamboo is the "Robert Young" cultivar of Phyllostachys viridis.

Twolunger said:

I saw a beautiful flowering succulent growing there and noticed one seedling growing in the stone walkway so plucked it out and brought it home. It grew and flowered the second year and produced thousands of seeds, all of which sprouted. I've been plucking them out, spraying them with weed killer, and they still keep coming. I've found them growing on the vacant lot next to me, so have been spraying them too. My wife said if I hadn't tried saving that seedling none of this would have happened. LOL.

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That's me with those stupid ornamental sweet potatoes!!

Yeah, it's hard to learn how to garden in the south, if you grew up in the north.

I don't know about Rich, but when I see bamboo I think of Japanese gardens with Koi ponds. They seem to shout "tranquility" silently. Naturally, for me anyway, I went off half cocked and put in a Koi pond. Nobody told me that the sun down here would overheat the water and you need a sunscreen. Duh, I should have figured that out. Then I had to buy a huge filter that sprays water in the air, supposedly to cool it. The algae grew so fast I had to clean the filter nearly weekly. Then frogs bred in the pond and were so loud at night that we couldn't get to sleep. Now I have flowers where the pond used to be and my tranquility comes from watching my quiet Corns. LOL.

Rich Z said:

You might be surprised....

http://www.bamboogarden.com/cold hardy bamboo.html

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Very interesting...

Twolunger said:

I don't know about Rich, but when I see bamboo I think of Japanese gardens with Koi ponds. They seem to shout "tranquility" silently. Naturally, for me anyway, I went off half cocked and put in a Koi pond. Nobody told me that the sun down here would overheat the water and you need a sunscreen. Duh, I should have figured that out. Then I had to buy a huge filter that sprays water in the air, supposedly to cool it. The algae grew so fast I had to clean the filter nearly weekly. Then frogs bred in the pond and were so loud at night that we couldn't get to sleep. Now I have flowers where the pond used to be and my tranquility comes from watching my quiet Corns. LOL.

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LOL yeah I've heard so many horror stories about ponds, I've decided the only way I will do one is inside a screened patio.

Many years ago, Connie wanted to have a swimming pool put in, so I made a deal with her that for every sale of her leopard geckos, she could take the money and put it towards the pool. She called it her "folding" money. Well, she did pretty good with the leopard geckos, and quickly had enough money for the pool. So we had a small in-ground pool put in with a concrete patio around it. Here in Florida there is some kind of law whereby all swimming pools must have some sort of fence or screened enclosure around it. But for the first year we did without.

That was back in the days when we were working our butts off with that SerpenCo business, and we found that the ONLY way we could find time to use the swimming pool was late at night when we were finished with the animal chores. So around midnight or so when we closed down the animal buildings and headed over to the house, we would go out to the pool for a little dip, and found the pool ringed with tree frogs. And they were all just singing up a storm. In short order I was able to mimic their calls, so I had them all worked up into a ruckus trying to outdo my calls. One of them got into the overflow pipe and found out that it greatly amplified his call, so he was a tough one to beat. Most of them were greens but every now and again some larger greys would show up.

Eventually we did put a screen enclosure around the pool, and honestly I do miss the tree frogs. Without the water source, you would never know there were that many tree frogs around here. Well, except every Thursday evening when we get the trash ready to take out to the road, there will often be three tree frogs in the WastePro trash can that we have to get out of there first. Can't see throwing away perfectly good tree frogs!

We've toyed with the idea of putting in a pond, but my concern would be that we might be creating a mosquito breeding pool. So yeah, you do have to be concerned with unintended consequences whenever you change something in nature. And hindsight can be a harsh instructor.

The small Koi ate mosquito larvae and also all the tadpoles. When I got rid of the Koi I put in waterlillies and fancy guppies, so no mosquitos. But a hundred frogs and some toads showed up. The final straw for my wife was when I saw a snake go under the large rocks around the pond. I moved the rocks and there was a beautiful Cottonmouth all coiled up. Visions of trips to the emergency room with the grand kids spelled doom for the pond. I didn't know Connie raised Leopard Geckos. I had a collection years back and raised them for my son's pet shop. I finally turned the whole collection over to him.

Took a pic of the white bamboo we are growing....