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Ive been having mediocre results with alot of my bamboo for the past couple years. Last year i got a little naughty with the fertilizer and had great results.

This year i did the same so im hoping for equally awesome results

These first two pics are from some Oldhamii thats just starting its second season.I got it in a pot, with one or two 1" thick culms, stuck her in the ground in February, and fertilized the living hell outta her. All these culms were from her first season in the ground.



This one is approaching the limits of Oldhamii, i must say that despite its thickness, its only 15 or so feet tall and tapers harshly all the way up.



The next two are from a 15g pot of Dendrocalamus Asper Betung Hitam i got from Bamboo Stu a few seasons ago. These culms are from her second season, and got a little top killed in the winter. Again, im doing an extreme fertilizer regimine and hoping for huge results.





These bad boys are only 10 feet tall or so, but incredibly thick at the base. After the first 3 feet, they are full on Black in color with very occasional green stripes.

Unfortunatley the fertilizer regimine isnt working on all my bamboo, I have some Vittatta that just never got the memo, and my Lako seems to have hit a wall in its 3rd season and has been putting up the same or smaller diameter shoots

What kind of fertilizer... I'd do the same. Just not fresh manure please.

I mix in ALOT of the pellet fertilizer with fresh soil and pack it on top for a couple inches. Then Chicken poop on top of that, and i hose it down with liquid fertilizer. I did this in 3 month intervals except during winter.

The fertilizer is just high nitrogen miracle grow. And it didnt work on every single thing i put it on. In fact it may have killed one of my recent oldhamii plantings, but this will be its first shooting season so the results remain to be seen.

I got mediocre results on P. Vivax, B. Vittata, and B. Lako

2 out of 5 Oldhammii plantings exploded with growth, 1 pretty much died, and 2 look to be about the same, maybe slightly larger.

Worked great on my D. Asper "betung Hitam"

Looks great, nice work. Are you in CA? You may know of Roy Rogers in FL from this forum, but he always gets very large bamboos in FL and he swore watering was the key for him on getting his tropicals big.

needmore wrote:Looks great, nice work. Are you in CA? You may know of Roy Rogers in FL from this forum, but he always gets very large bamboos in FL and he swore watering was the key for him on getting his tropicals big.

I put in a drip irrigation system a few years ago and it does help alot. I did it because its just easier to water my plants everyday, i didnt realize at the time that its much more efficient at watering. Looking back i realize alot of the water was just running off and not absorbing when i used a hose

They'd grow even bigger if they laid off the Marlboros...

Roy says it's water and I'll buy that, it keeps the roots from having to start over. They say last year's drought and heat will have deleterious effects on trees for up to ten years, here in Texas. A number of them will die, two or three years from now that made it. But our boo was carefully monitored and irrigated when needed, and the uptick in height was the biggest ever on just about all of our boos.