Request advice on transplanting (and trimming) rampant bamboo to a neighbor's property

[alpha male]

Do you have experience trimming and/or transplanting bamboo?

My neighbor has noticed the rampant bamboo on my property that I never planted (it came with the house which was a foreclosure):

She bought bamboo about a year ago and all of it died.

So she asked me what I do to make mine grow like a weed. The answer is I do nothing. It gets sun all day. And that's about it (Santa Cruz mountains). I don't even water it (sprinklers are all broken.)

So, today I started digging out a few bamboo stalks for her, and wow was I surprised!

They're all connected together by an underground root system (or something)! I had to cut the lateral root to pull the plants out. Now I have three connected in a four-foot long row!

Before I pull it out totally to give to my neighbor, I'd like to ask advice since I do NOT have a green thumb.

Do you have advice for how to dig out and transplant bamboo from one house to another?

Conversely, how do I manage the bamboo I have which is growing like wildfire. Should I just cut them down to the stalks on the edge of the walkway where they're reaching out?

[chaniarts]

bamboo spreads by underground runners. it can be extremely hard to stop it from spreading. perhaps a ditch, or burying a (deep) wall of a piece of metal will do so.

it's also hard extremely hard to kill it non-chemically, so you might ask what she did to try to keep it alive.

[alpha male]

I didn't even think of this until I tried digging it out today.

I'm wondering. If I have three 10-foot long plants connected together (about 4 feet long of soil), will it be better for the transplant to KEEP them together?

Or, will it be OK to cut them apart (since that makes transport to the neighbor easier)?

My question is whether or not cutting the runner (which seems to be a single 3/8" thick rootlike thing) will hurt the transplant?

[chaniarts]

that's how you get 3 plants for the cost of 1.

generally, yes, you can cut it as long as you leave a piece on each end. the ends will seal, and then start growing from each end.

bamboo has a lifespan. it then generally flowers, then dies all at once in patches, because they are connected together.

disconnecting them can cause some plants to remain alive when they do a mass dieoff.

[alpha male]

Wow. Bamboo is NOTHING like normal plants!

I found this web site for how to propagate bamboo:

Turns out (almost) nobody ever seeds them simply because they don't flower for fifty to one hundred years!

They propagate underground, in the direction of the lowest leaves, so I'm not sure if I gave my neighbor the right pieces underground!

I handed her a half dozen 12 foot tall, 3/8" thick plants that I cut out and had to separate from the horizontal roots to fit in garbage bags filled with water.

Apparently I could have just given her the rhizome itself, which you can bend into a U shape and put in a pot. But, not for long as this picture shows:

[alpha male]

Actually, I just found out that there is only one plant in my bamboo grove.

Every stalk (culm) is a clone of the other one (via rhizomes).

Bamboo seems like the weirdest grass around.

- It (the culm) never gets thicker than the day it popped up.

- It never gets taller than the end of the first year

- It just gets more rigid each year for the first three years (or so)

- It never grows leaves until it gets as tall as it's gonna get

- Then, all it does is grow more and more leaves over time

- By the third year (or so), it's as grown as it will ever be

- It flowers once every few decades (and then dies, some at the same time all over the world, almost killing the pandas according to what I've read)

- It can grow a dozen inches in a day (and more under ideal conditions)

- It has no secondary growth wood (so it doesn't taper like a tree)

- It doesn't repair damage, so pruning is permanent

- You can eat the shoots (after boiling)

The weirdest of all though is the fact that some species flower at the same time no matter where they are planted in the world! The theory goes, according to WIkipedia anyway, that this is to satiate the predator while flowering and to starve the predator at all other times. Whew! Weird plant!

[dadiOH]

Bamboo is a grass. Many grasses spread via underground runners (rhizomes). You can but grass plugs which means that the rhizomes have been cut. Another plant that does the same as bamboo is ginger. When I transplate them, I cut the runner into individual plants.

I can't guarantee it but I'd cut the bamboo into individual plants.

Note that there are two types of bamboo...one is running bamboo like you have, the other, clumping bamboo, doesn't propagate with runners. The only way to contain running bamboo is with physical barriers and those barriers need to be deep...18" or more.

[alpha male]

I never realized it before but my bamboo grows like grass on steroids but it NEVER goes outside it's designated area.

Looking now, I realize there is a wall of concrete a foot thick and a few feet tall surrounding the entire bamboo grove.

So, at least in my case, that explains why there isn't a single plant anywhere outside the grove.

I've been reading up on it, and, people put barriers up that are plastic and a couple of feet tall and they angle them outward so that the runners always deflect upward.

They also dig trenches, and catch the runners as they traverse the trench. Luckily, I don't have any of those problems.

Maybe I'll plant ginger inside there as I love pickled ginger!