enough is enough

[dudley]

23 degrees expected tonite
this cold for this long is unheard of here
either a cat or a dog uncovers my hamiltonii every night and it is still too small to have reached its full cold hardiness rating. second year in ground second year top killed.
im afraid to uncover my lako but when i touch the cover the leaves underneath make a terrible crunching noise. cant be good.
vulgarises all look awful.
so far to my surprise everything else is holding up ok.
the oak canopy seems to be holding in enough heat to prevent the dreaded sage green virus, but it is too early to say for sure. angel mist looks good and got too tall this summer to cover so I'm feeling good about that. Brandisii looks like it will make it as well, but it is still early and lots of winter left.
we did get some snow yesterday and set a record for not getting out of the 30s all day.
I dont have enough winter clothes to get me through more than three days of cold at a time so ill be sniffing laundry in the a.m. grrrr!
"I'm a florida boy, genuine, wear flip flops in the winter time".
but not this year.

[mr.mike]

Dudley, things aren't any better here in west central Fl either. I've got at least a dozen boo's with crispy leaves. The list is very long on what's toast. Worst looking right now is the G. 'Bali white stripe'. Along with that are Lako, G. Maxima, D. Brandesii, G. apus, G. Sumatra, a 25g potted Barbie, and a few more. I'm not sure what the actual low was last night but tonight it is supposed to be down to 27 degrees. Today the wind began to howl and the wind chill was in the high 20's to low 30's all day long. Not good for the tropicals at all. I do believe I'll have plenty of fence posts to use this spring!

Time to move to Costa Rica!

mike

[mantis]

Before and after... http://picasaweb.google.com/frismanis/FrozenPlants#

[boolover]

...Before and after... http://picasaweb.google.com/frismanis/FrozenPlants# ..

Mantis,

Heartbreaking to see such devastation.

Last night is was in the low 20's until about 6:00 AM when it went down to 18 degrees for a few hours. And, this is Florida! B. Chungii and B. Textillis Kanapaha show some leaf damage. Lako is toast, but that's not a surprise.

In the next week or so, the full extent of the awful temps will show just how the bamboo handled the cold - and it's early January with lots of winter ahead. Thought last year was bad; so far, this year is worse.

Yes, ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!

[serenityinbamboo]

I agree with all of you...ENOUGH IS ENOUGH!!! Here in North Florida we have had 12 consecutive nights with 14+ hours of HARD FREEZE! Half of those nights were in the teens while the other half low 20s! My lako and asper are total toast and by the looks of my malingensis and my oldhamii they are 90% and 60% toast respectively! My Kimmei is 75% fried, but surprisingly the goldstripe and alphose karr look great with very minimal leaf curl on the top branches of the new shoots! We still have call for a couple more nights of this crap soo we will see.. as for my runners, so far all are doing fine like this weather is nothing to them even the ones in pots! The only exception is my nigra daikokuchiku has minimal leaf curl.

[needmore]

Mantis, have you considered planting some running species on your vacant land? Your winters should never kill them back and you'd have killer groves, although you'd want to lean toward the drought tolerant species. Your tractor with bushhog would make control a snap. They'd also provide some wind protection for your clumpers but I doubt that would have helped in this cold snap.

[bambootony]

Hey Brad,
Funny you shoud say something about vacant land.
I was just offered several acres on a S.E facing hill to grow all the Bamboo I want!!!!
How many pots of Phyllostachys aureosulcata 'Aureocaulis' do you have left???
I will take a few more pots this year as the 'Aureocaulis' pretty much just laughed at the receint cold.
Ever better than my yellow groove...
From Bambootony

[needmore]

Interesting, I wonder if it because they are so well rooted, for me it is less hardy than Aureosulcata, Spectabilis, and Harbin Inversa, but seriously hardier than my Harbin which has yet to winter over after 6 years or so. I remember dragging 50+ of those heavy pots into the ghouse so for now there are more though I've had 2 screening inquiries this week - must be cabin fever to be thinking about planting bamboo now?

[boolover]

My Kimmei is 75% fried, but surprisingly the goldstripe and alphose karr look great with very minimal leaf curl on the top branches of the new shoots!

It seems that anything in the multiplex family is a safe bet for leaf (and culm) survival in most any part of Florida. My Alponse Karr, Golden Goddess, Green Stripe & Hedge, (so far) have not shown any sign of damage. Just like you, we will have at least one more night of freezing temps, so who knows what other surprises will show up tomorrow.

Good luck to us all...

[mantis]

Mantis, have you considered planting some running species on your vacant land? Your winters should never kill them back and you'd have killer groves, although you'd want to lean toward the drought tolerant species. Your tractor with bushhog would make control a snap. They'd also provide some wind protection for your clumpers but I doubt that would have helped in this cold snap.

The thing with runners is I really haven't seen any groves that get much more than 10' tall around here. The best I've seen is some Robert Young, and even that wasn't very impressive. 50 miles further east, and the runners thrive, but my area is just too hot and dry. It could be that there are some rarer species that haven't been tried in this area that might do well, but I'm pretty clueless about runners, since I haven't looked into them at all due to their weak showing (and only having 1/5th of an acre until recently). If you have any suggestions on species that you think might do well I'm all ears.

This cold really surprised me. This area hasn't seen temps like these in 20 years, so hopefully we won't see another event like this in many years.

I will say that it has effected my plans for planting though. My privacy hedge is now going to incorporate more multiplexes for sure, and I'll probably also use something like clone-x instead of sinospinosa, but I'm not sure yet. I need to wait a couple weeks to see the full extent of the damage, and and determine what actually came through the best.

[needmore]

Kinder Chambers is in..Buckholts TX? Pretty hot & dry he says and he NEVER waters his bamboo. He says that Viridis does fine and I think that Semiarundinaria fastuosa does as well. I would also try Rubromarginata & Mannii 'Decora' in your area.

[mantis]

Kinder Chambers is in..Buckholts TX? Pretty hot & dry he says and he NEVER waters his bamboo. He says that Viridis does fine and I think that Semiarundinaria fastuosa does as well. I would also try Rubromarginata & Mannii 'Decora' in your area.

Thanks for the suggestions. I know the viridis does well at Mercer Arboretum, but even though they are only 40 miles N.E. of me they get a bunch more rain than I do.

I'll pick up a couple different ones to try out.

[Bamboo Outlaw]

Kinder Chambers is in..Buckholts TX? Pretty hot & dry he says and he NEVER waters his bamboo. He says that Viridis does fine and I think that Semiarundinaria fastuosa does as well. I would also try Rubromarginata & Mannii 'Decora' in your area.

I believe the Viridis and fastuosa would be top pics. The Rubro is a stunted mess, too hot and dry. I can't say for the Decora.

[Bamboo Outlaw]

Yellow Groove is another that does very poorly here. It sure is nice around our place in Arkansas though

[ghmerrill]

any of you guys down in Tx try Henon? we get pretty hot and dry here in the summer, with months of little to no rain, and Henon, once established for a few years, does pretty good.