1200 W. Canal Street, New Smyrna Beach, Fl 32168 - 386-427-3330
Choosing the right bamboo for your purpose: With over 1200 varieties of bamboo, one can usually be found to fit most needs. (Such as privacy, garden focal point, decorative yard plant, wind barrier, potted house plant, bonsai, soil retention, ground cover, forest grove, food, building material, crafts, instrument making, just to name a few!). Plants range from one foot ground covers to over one hundred foot giants, divided into two basic groups of running bamboo and non-invasive clumping bamboo. Be particularly mindful of the temperature extremes in your area and choose your plant accordingly. We have a minimum temperature field on our bamboo price list. These temperatures are the point that the plant may loose some or all of it’s leaves and are not necessarily temperatures that will kill the plant unless exposed over a long period.
Most plants recover fully from brief cold spells. Growing three times faster than most woody plants, bamboo can fill your needs quickly and beautifully.
Picking the desired location: Most bamboos like sunny areas, although certain varieties can deal with some shade better than others. Check to see if your bamboo can take shade, such as under a canopy of large trees. Keep in mind that sun must still reach them for a portion of the day. Bamboo likes to be in well-drained soil, kept moist but not sitting in water. Bamboo can adapt to most soil types. Extra sandy soil may possibly require the periodic addition of organic matter and possible extra fertilizer and water. Bamboo has a strong will to live and will survive under most conditions but properly placed and given a little care, it will thrive!
Planting your bamboo: Plantings are best done in the evening and not during the heat of day. Dig a hole approximately twice the diameter and 50% deeper than the pot. Place some potting soil (amended with organic matter, if desired) and mix with your soil in the bottom of hole to the depth of the bottom of plant. Remove plant carefully from container. If root bound, pull away and separate roots from sides and bottom of plant. Place in hole with top of plant soil about the same level as ground surface. Fill the rest of hole with potting soil mixed 50% with your soil. Water plant liberally. Use some of the excess dirt to build a small water retention wall around plant. If possible, place mulch, a few inches thick, around plant to help with water retention and heat/cold protection.
Care of bamboo: Water plant daily for a couple of weeks or more, if possible. Once plant has been established happily in it’s new location, watering can be cut back to an “as needed” basis. Of course, the amount of sun, heat, rain and soil type will ultimately determine your watering schedule. Usually a deep watering once or twice per week is advisable in the Spring and Summer and less in the Fall and Winter months. When the plant needs water, the leaves will fold inward similar to blades of grass, although, some bamboos naturally do this in the heat of the day, so this method is not absolutely accurate but a guide. Eventually, you will get to know the needs of your plants by simple observation. Commercial fertilizers are ok. In the Spring and Summer, At BOUNTIFUL EARTH, we use a slow, 17-3-11- Lesco,(from Home Depot) mix as well as Bayer Advanced Tree and Shrub systemic also available from Home Depot or Lowes. Do not use grass fertilizer mixes, as they are absorbed too quickly. Palm mixes are said to do fine or some ornamental mixes. A good Florida schedule is the first of Sept., Dec., March., and June. Plants will usually survive without all of this but a little care is needed to have them flourish and to be as hearty, large and healthy as possible.
Bamboo Insect alert
Bamboo Mealy bug has unfortunately arrived in Florida. This little pink menace usually hides under the culm leaf and in branch sections. Mealy is detected by seeing a white web/cotton type substance on canes. The bugs are usually under this substance. We have not ever lost an entire plant to this bug but it has done a job on some new canes. The best treatment we have found at our home nursery is a retail product called Bayer Advanced Tree and Shrub insecticide available at Home Depot or Lowe's etc. This product claims to work for a year and seems very effective. There are many other products that can also be used if you have your own favorite insecticide for Mealy Bugs. The "Bayer" product is a systemic so takes awhile to become effective. In the meantime...visable Mealy Bugs should be sprayed with any good insecticide soap. The soap should be applied directly on vi sable Mealy and repeated when new Mealy's crawl form their shelter under culm leaf. If carefully done, the culm leaf can be peeled away from plant slightly to expose Mealy for spraying. Living in Florida is great.... but unfortunately many of the world's bugs also like this hot, humid climate. This bug probably hitched a ride on someone's un quarantined smuggled suitcase plant A good point for the 1 year quarantine period for all bamboo plants imported. At Bountiful Earth, we try our best to control this bug, but sometime success eludes us due to the hidden nature of the bug's growth. Although we guarantee the health of our plants, we can not guarantee against Mealy Bugs. They are a force of nature and unfortunately sometimes a part of owning bamboo in Florida. The good news is that they apparently don't affect any plants but bamboo so fears about spreading throughout your yard should be satisfied.
Below is more information on this pest.......
Reprinted from the website of the
A Bamboo Mealybug
Palmicultor lumpurensis Takahashi
Greg Hodges, Taxonomic Entomologist
INTRODUCTION: Division of Plant Industry inspector Barbara Wilder collected this new Continental US Record on August 12, 2002 in Lake Buena Vista, Orange Co. The host plant was Bambusa sp. ‘Olhammi’. Since that date, surveys have found additional infestations of this mealybug on Bambusa sp. ‘Ole Hammi’.* The following information was summarized from Takahashi 1950 and Ben Dov 1994.
DESCRIPTION: Adult and immature stages of this mealybug are grayish-pink to red in color. Individuals lack lateral wax filaments and are covered by a fine, white, mealy wax (Fig. 2, Fig. 3). The mealybugs are found beneath the sheaths of the bamboo. Slight to moderate infestations may not be easily recognized. Once populations explode, infestations are easy to spot with large amounts of white wax being visible on the external portions of the leaf sheaths (Fig. 1).
SIMILAR MEALYBUGS: This mealybug superficially resembles the pink hibiscus mealybug by having a pinkish body and lacking lateral wax filaments. It should be noted that bamboo is not a host for the pink hibiscus mealybug.
BIOLOGY: There is very little known about the biology of this mealybug species. The original description of this insect in 1951 listed no biological data. This mealybug is native to warm climates and like many mealybugs, it will more than likely have multiple generations throughout a given year.
ECONOMIC IMPORTANCE:It is impossible to predict the overall economic significance of this pest on bamboo at this time. Heavy infestations of this mealybug have the potential to cause an abortion of new shoots.
DISTRIBUTION: This bamboo mealybug is recorded from two regions--Australasian: Australia (personal communique with Dr. Doug Miller USDA-ARS); Oriental: Malaysia, Philippines, Vietnam--and in Florida where the only known infestations are in Orange County.
Ben Dov, Y. 1994. A systematic catalogue of the mealybugs of the world. Intercept unlimited. 686 p.
Takahashi, R. 1950. Some mealybugs (Pseudococcidae: Homoptera) from the Malay peninsula. The Indian Journal of Entomology, Vol. XII (1): 12-15.