I have to google and find out how I’m supposed to prepare fresh bamboo shoots. I’ll have a nice big bowl full. (Yes, I must put pictures in the gallery…it’s so fun!)
The rule on running bamboo is that you must keep up with it. Every year (fall is best) you should make it part of your fall chores and check for runners, then clip and pull them up. Before they have a chance to spread twenty feet to make lots of babies in spring.
Well, as it turns out, I just didn’t get it done last fall. I have an excuse, but the bamboo doesn’t care. And now it’s spread all over the place…and many have headed for the compost pile. Why not? That’s good eatin for any plant that can find its way.
I knew this had happened, because I saw some of the roots (rhizomes actually). They’re very shallow rooted and in places pop out of the ground for a foot or so. That is helpful in seeing where they’ve gone. You clip at the mother, then pull it up like a rope….to the end. Most of them pull right up, but some of them are TOUGH. I pulled out a few today - in between other, less fun, chores - and a couple of them were hard to get.
The shoots are coming up quickly, and if I don’t get this all done in the next few days, I’ll have shoots that are a foot and a half tall. I swear these shoots grow a foot a day. It’s too bad I don’t know anyone who wants bamboo because I could give them a nice starter grove.
A friend, when I was describing this to her, asked what I would do if I ever moved. I said the right thing to do would be to dig ALL of my bamboo up and either move it to the new place, or dispose of it. It would be a terrible thing to just move away and let that bamboo go. In two years, it would move into neighbor yards and they wouldn’t know what the heck hit them.
Most people are scared of running bamboos because it DOES take a commitment to keep it from becoming invasive. But if you can make that annual commitment (or are willing to do some extra work in spring, like I must do now), you can keep it under control and have the most rewarding, beautiful bamboo. I LOVE my boo!
It hurts to pull up my runners because part of me just wants to plant bamboo everywhere and live in a bamboo forest. (With a panda of course. I love pandas too.) But I must because there are several runners in my vegetable garden now. That’s not a good thing.
Now I’ve got to find a recipe of some kind and figure out how to eat these. Supposedly my species of boo has the most tasty of shoots.
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