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