did my aureosulcata survive the winter???

[joe lajeunesse]

I planted around 100 auresulcata plants last fall that I dug up from a customers property. They ranged in size from 3-4' to 20'. NJ had such a harsh winter and the area they are planted regularly received high wind gusts. Even with all my staking I had to reset some of the larger plants as they would fall from all the wind and snow. Now almost all the plants look like half to 3/4 of the leaves are dead, but they all still have some green on them. Since this is my first bamboo adventure, Im not sure what condition my plants are in. I own a landscape company so I took great care when planting and added soil amendments, staked each plant, then added shredded oak leaves as a mulch topdressing. I thought I did everything right, but I dont see any shoots yet. Some of my customers have bamboo and they are shooting some a foot tall already. Granted those are in full sun areas. My site has alot of mature oak trees so it does get sun but sometimes filtered, and for some reason it stays very cold and wet. Is it just still too early or did I lose my plants? I really hope not- I put alot of time into plantings these guys last fall and was really looking forward to seeing some shoots this spring.

[Alan_L]

Do you see any evidence of leaf buds starting to swell or elongate? Do the leaf buds all look dried and tan, or are some still greenish/gold and shiny? Are the culms all tan or are they still "green"?

I assume you did, but have you pulled back the mulch to see if there are any shoots starting to poke through? It may be that they are slower since they're in shade.

Were these the plants that you were going to experiment on with wilt-pruf and some other things?

[foxd]

Did you get plenty of rhizome? I'm assuming that you did, but it doesn't hurt to ask if you didn't.

[joe lajeunesse]

yes these were the plants. And honestly there is no difference between the ones I used the wilt pruf on versus the ones I didnt. And no difference in the ones I used the mycorrizhae on. But, when I got to my shop this morning, I went out there to take some pictures to send you and just for kicks pulled out one of the plants that fell over the most from the winter (it wasnt much in the ground anyway) and to my surprise I saw a little 2" shoot coming out of the side of the root ball! So Im guessing since this one was once of the worst damaged and it is starting to shoot, then I am in ok shape. I pretty much have every condition you described- tan leaves, shiny leaves, green culms, tan culms... but there are so many plants that even if they all didnt make it, the other (hopefully) will fill in. I think, if a majority of them do survive, I will have better results from my testing once they start to visibly shoot above ground. Then I think the ones I spray with wilt pruf and added the amenment will take off more quickly.

Is there anything I can do now to encourage growth? I still have the oak leaves over all of them and it went down to 42 degrees last night, so we arent out of the woods yet with cold weather. Sometimes we have left over mulch from jobs- should I mulch them soon? And if so, remove the leaves first or ok to mulch on top of the leaves? Any fertilizer I should be applying?

[joe lajeunesse]

and yes i did get alot of rhizome. I guess bamboo is popular in central america where my employees are from because at the customers house we took the plants from they kept digging out rhizomes and saying "mucho beuno!" they love bamboo as much as we do.