This is very promising. I think I'm going to plant some small indoor varieties to play with now since I don't have a yard.

If your planning to use it in an emergency you will need to have it well established ahead of time. While established plants can grow astonishingly fast, you can almost see it grow, it can take many months for the plant to show visible growth.

Also consider that you may want to plant several different varieties. Ones that are optimized for your intended purposes. Some varieties are a fairly good source of food. Others are best where you want long thin stalks like for screens, several others grow large, straight and strong enough for real structural uses. Others are best for fiber to make cordage and at least one grows wide with widely spaced watertight cauls so it produces nice containers. There is a certain amount of overlap but your going to get the easiest and best results using the type that has been bred for your particular job.

Bamboo would make a good planting for a remote cabin. Many types are pretty much self-tending. Invasive types may require underground barriers if it isn't to take over the entire area. Dense-stand types make good barriers and once well established the stands can slow anyone down a lot and are pretty much impossible to move through without making a lot of noise.

Most people don't know much about bamboo. Which means you may be able to have large stands of a valuable resource standing in plain sight without much worry about anyone taking it.

Where would you get some to plant & grow? And how does it workout in a cold climate? I live in Ohio and we get cold winters, is this a plant that can handle winter?

from ranger ricks web site:

How to Make a
US Army Ranger - Rick
Bamboo Walkin Stick
I don't know about you, but I've always been a tightwad when it comes to money, just ask my wife, she'll tell ya. Well if there's one thing I won't spend money on, is on things that I can make myself. For example, check out these walking sticks.
$99.00
Can you believe some of these prices? Unbelievable! But I guess if you're rich and wealthy it doesn't matter how much things cost because if you like what you see and you've got the dough, you're gonna buy it, right? Nope! Not me, no way Jose.

Now I've been making my own walking sticks since I was a little kid, and I've read dozens of outdoor survival books on how you should select one too. Some say they should be as tall as the person using it, and others say it doesn't matter how tall it is as long as it's got a fork on the end so you can use it to pin snakes, whack bears, and beat up other defenseless critters with it. (Yea, right, sure, uh-uh, whatever.)

Well, here's my philosophy and two cents on the subject… As long as you're comfortable with the length and it's durable enough to support your weight when used as a walking stick, weapon, etc… It doesn't make a difference if it has a fork on the end or not, nor if it's taller or shorter than the person using it. Because if it's too heavy, too bulky, too long, too thick, or too whatever else… You're probably gonna get tired of hauling it and ditch it anyway, right? So you may as well choose one you're comfortable with and the hell with what these damn survival books tell ya. Ya know what I mean? Duh?

Now here's a walking stick I'm sure you're gonna like, it's not only lightweight, durable, and inexpensive, but you can buy'em in almost any garden supply store, a "bamboo stick."



Yep, believe it or not, all these items fit inside the top portion of my walkin stick. No BS! The Mini Mag-Lite, the small Swiss Army Knife, a condom, water purification tablets, fishing line, hooks, sinkers, etc, including a little bitty compass too. And to make sure these items stay securely inside, I close/plug the top with a plastic cork. Cool, huh?

Now if you decide to buy a bamboo stick, don't necessarily choose one that's a comfortable length. Because the shorter it is, the more likely it'll be a very narrow bamboo stick, which means you may not be able to fit all your survival goodies inside of it. So study the diameter of the bamboo stick and the items you want to store inside of it, because if you find the right diameter and it's too long, you can always cut it down. You know what I mean bubba?

Here, check out these pictures and see what else I did to my bamboo walkin stick.



That's right, the next to the last compartment at the bottom is an "improvised lantern" too. How did I do this? All I did was drill a hole in the top portion and section of this bamboo stick, fill it with pure/rubbing alcohol, cut out a short square piece of aluminum, place a long narrow strip of "cotton clothe" along the edge and rolled it until it fit "nice & snug" inside the hole.

IMPORTANT: The rolled up piece of aluminum should rest "flush & securely" inside the hole, and if it doesn't, then you'll need to trim it. But be careful, because if you trim it too short it'll fall inside the hole and you won't be able to extend, remove nor get it out.

Now before lighting the wick for the first time; (a) make sure it's completely saturated with alcohol, (b) the rolled up aluminum is pulled out as far as it will go so the flame won't burn the bamboo, (c) the wick is kept as short as possible, because the longer the wick is - the bigger the flame and the more fuel it burns up too.

WARNING! DANGER! Use strictly pure/rubbing alcohol because (1) it's less combustible than other flammable liquids and (2) won't leave a poison residue inside the bamboo stick when it's used up.

To prevent the alcohol from evaporating and leaking out, just seal the hole with some duck tape. Or better yet, visit your local bicycle repair shop and ask if you can have the narrowest bicycle tire "inner tube" they're throwing away and cut off a piece about twice the size as the hole and slide it over. Works like a charm!

I also placed a rubber "chair leg cover" over the bottom to keep out the dirt and prevent the bamboo stick from splitting should I poke something hard with it like a rock. Then I got me a long thick nail, melted a whole in the center and slid it inside. So now if I ever need to use it as a fishing or hunting spear, all I have to do is remove the rubber cover, run the nail through the other way, place a piece of wood inside the bottom to prevent the nail from being pushed inward and place it back on the end.

You can buy these rubber chair leg covers in almost any hardware supply store, but before you buy one make sure you know what size/diameter you need or you might be throwing money out the window. And if you can't find the right size, no problem, just plug the bottom with something else and wrap some tape & wire around it to keep it from splitting.

I also drilled a couple more holes so I could use the other bamboo compartments for storing water, but I doubt if I'll ever use them unless I'm in a real life or death survival situation. Why? Well I'm not sure, but if my bamboo stick came from outside the United States it was probably treated with some sort of bug killing chemical before being allowed in country and I have no idea if it's harmful to humans or not. So if you make a couple holes in yours and use'em, you do so at your own risk.


And here's something else I attached to my bamboo walkin stick, a large plastic trash bag and several yards/meters of parachute cord. Why? Oh, just in case I need to make an emergency/field expedient rain jacket or shelter.

First you fold the trash bag to the size you want it, then you wrap it around the stick and secure it in place with a small piece of tape. Then wrap the parachute cord firmly around the bag and add a couple of bicycle tire "inner tube" bands around it to help keep it much more securely in place.

Wanna know what else you can add, use, or do with this bamboo stick? Order The Ranger Digest Series and find out.



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The Sock

Chris Reeve (yeah, the Sebenza Guy) USED to make walking sticks - well, "Gent's canes" - Of course, they were limited run, and they are no longer made. When he made them, I was yound and healthy - Now that I need a cane 1-3 days/week (depending on how my leg feels) I WISH I had one. The top was made from defective acetaibular balls from Hip implants. You pretty much had your choice of wood - sigh

There's a bamboo forum over at the GardenWeb. I think there are at least 3 kinds of bamboo that grow in colder areas.

http://forums.gardenweb.com/forums/bamboo/

Sue

A cousin brought my mom a bouquet of her flowers last week - including some of her bamboo. I had no idea it would grow around here - but yesterday I went over and dug up some from her yard to plant beside my house.

As some have said, she told me it's pretty aggressive in how it grows - she'd spent something like $80 per pot (or however it was sold) for several, and now she has two patches of it growing that are each about the size of a large couch (or bigger). I don't know which species it is, but it's good through zone 5, and we're zone 6 (not sure if I have that correct).

She said to keep it from spreading you have to contain the roots - either building a barrier with something like metal flashing or within a container of some kind, aboveground or buried. It usually grows a runner root out to spread as deep as 18 inches, but the ones I dug out grew them at about 6 inches deep or so. She said part of the problem holding her bamboo back was that she'd planted it exposed to the Western winds, which really holds down its growth. A lot of her bamboo was 3-4 feet tall, and thin as a pencil (or thinner). Some was closer to 6 feet tall, with a thickness of about my index finger.

When digging them up (I only cut about 8 out of one of her small thickets) I found cutting the runner roots pretty tough - it's basically full-strength, spiky bamboo growing parallel to the surface, and thicker than the tree it branched off of. I ended up using my Swiss Army knife's saw to finish it off without having to splinter it with the shovel.

My cousin has a very clay, poor soil right around her house (they piled the clay from digging out her basement), and she said the bamboo prefers a much sandier soil. I bought a couple 30-gallon Rubbermaid-style storage containers, and buried the one after drilling a bunch of drainage holes in the bottom. I pre-watered it with a couple gallons of water before putting in the roots, then buried it a bit deeper than it had been growing. The roots of a two-tree clump - with the runners extending from either side of the clumps - just fit into the container lengthwise, then I added the others spaced throughout the container. It looked big in the store, but the root system occupies a lot more space than you would think with what appears aboveground. However, there's a lot of room for more trees to grow up while keeping the roots contained. And it's in a nice sunny spot - the Eastern side of the house along the garage wall, to keep it protected from the harshest winds.

Next week I'll dig out another bunch for the second container.

I'll see if she knows what species it is next week and post that if I find out.

Dave

So, my cousin says her variety is bissetti. I hit this link:

Bamboo Web

And there is a Phyllostachys bissetii and a Phyllostachys
bissetii 'Dwarf' - first grows to 12 feet tall, the second just under 6 feet. Hers is no more than about 7 feet tall, but she says much of that is due to being exposed to a West wind - I'll have to ask her if she has the dwarf type or not.

Of what I've planted so far, - two clumps of root system as big as I could fit into a tall 5-gallon-diameter bucket - only one bit appears to be flourishing. I think the aggressive hacking it took to dig up a piece of root system damaged and perhaps killed a lot. So I have two 18-gallon Rubbermaid containers buried and about filled with bamboo, and most of it is yellowing out in the leaves and trunk. I guess I'll have to go get some more.

Dave

There are also a lot of knowledgeable people at the GardenWeb Bamboo forum GardenWeb Bamboo Forum

If your bamboo gets enough water and food, the roots will probably break through the sides of your Rubbermaid containers. Vertical sides for a bamboo container are not advised.

The most desirable way to keep bamboo confined is to dig a trench about two feet deep, beveling the sides inward as you dig down: \__/ and line them with heavy flexible pond liner material (don't worry about the bottom). Bamboo roots travel horizontally and seem to exert a lot of force when confined. The angled side allows the roots to hit the barrier and then deflect them upward, where they are visible. Routine inspection of the perimeter allows you to see when roots are projecting upward and you can lop them off.

Sue