Moso bamboo diary 4

Finally, fourth part of the diary is here. It is nice to know that this little project is helpful to people and encourages them to grow their own moso or other species of bamboo. I hope that one day I will be able to write about fully mature moso plants.

In recent years there are more and more articles on the web about  bamboo which is a great thing because consciousness about bamboo`s application and it`s usefulness is rising.

Links to the previous posts:
Moso bamboo diary 1
Moso bamboo diary 2 (moso seed germination instructions at the end of the post) 
Moso bamboo diary 3

I`m not very happy with weather that we had in 2014. We had too much rain and too little sun. Even the summer was rainy which is very unusual for my area. There was so much rain that I didn`t have to use the water from the water reservoir that I dug up the year before. 

During the winter 2014./2015. we had sun and we had snow. Lowest temperature that we had was  -18°C || 0°F and it lasted only one day. Same as all other seasons in the year 2014., the winter was not like we expected it to be. We had interchanging periods of sunny (warm) and snowy weather. Basically, every 2 weeks it was either sunny (snow melted) or snowing (sometimes raining). The problem, as always, was cold wind. Even though the cold did not do much damage to the bamboo, cold wind made up for it. -15°C || 5°F accompanied with the wind did the most of the damage to the leafs and stems. Rhizomes were not damaged by the cold because snow protected them against low temperatures. Even those rhizomes which are on top of the soil are still alive. Some of them lost their tips but otherwise they are ok. 

Straw turned up to be a great thing to use. Straw started to rot and provide nutrients and protection. Grass that grew through the straw is a bit of a problem but after all shots for this season are done growing I`ll use lawn mower to remove the grass. Since this was very wet winter rodents did not inhabit the space under the straw. There were some attempts but water pushed them out. Also, I have my oldest cat sleeping and paroling between bamboo. His contribution is priceless. :)

Plans for this year are very simple when it comes to moso. The thing I must do is deepen the trenches around the bamboo parcel in order to improve the drainage. Rhizomes have traveled away from the plants but not that much that I would need to deepen the trench because of them. Also, there is some fertilization that should be done. Horse manure in form of pellets seems the best solution at this point. I might even dig some holes in the ground near the plants and bury pellets under the ground. Other than that there is monitoring, documenting and keeping the parcel clean from weed as much as possible. Oh, and there is a watering system that needs to be installed in case we have a hot summer this year. It will be a simple, primitive system based on the water`s free fall.

As said in Diary no. 3, the first date to start this post is March 1st. By that date there was no more snow and winter damage is easier to see. Temperatures went up above freezing point. It was not warm but the ground started to warm up and, of course, there was rain every few days.

March 1st

What really came as surprise was one bamboo that started shooting very early. I discovered the shoots on March 15th. All other bamboo did not have any shoots so maybe this one will be more cold tolerant than others. Temperatures in the period from March 1st to March 15th were around 2°C || 35°F in the mornings and 7°C || 44°F during the day. Not all days were the same but these temperatures are more or less what we had most of the days.

March 15th

April 1st

Weather stayed pretty much the same as before (maybe few degrees warmer) but bamboo changed. Leafs fell off and moso started shooting.

Even though it looks like it, not all stems are dead. Some of them simply lost the leafs and are going to regrow them from the buds. That already started to happen. The level until which branches are alive is either yellow or green, and the dead part is simply dry. I will not remove the dead parts of the plants; let them fall off on their own.

Closer examination of the bamboo parcel gave some interesting conclusions. Almost all bamboo kept growing under the straw placed around them. It rarely happened that the rhizomes went away from the straw borders. Many rhizomes are partially above ground, in the space between straw and soil. After some 20 cm || 0.65 ft of growing they would dive into the soil. My estimate is that most of the rhizomes traveled between 40 and 50 cm || 1.30 and 1.64 ft away from the plant. That bigger bamboo at the beginning of the parcel probably has rhizomes which traveled even more. His rhizomes are mostly underground so it is hard to know.

Bamboo parcel is divided into three rows. Shoots that started to appear are within those three straw lines (rows). There aren`t many of them but I expect that others will also appear from under the straw since most of the rhizome growth happened there. Almost all bamboo that started to shoot is located on the right and left row (outer rows). The land is not leveled up so the middle row is a little lower than the other two and water stayed longer there. Because of that there are only few bamboos that started to shoot in the middle row. They will probably start to shoot a little later.

The big bamboo at the beginning of the parcel has some nice big fuzzy shoots. When the biggest shoot reaches 50 cm || 1.64 ft I will start daily measurements just like I did last year.

26.04.2015.

Moso shooting...

29.04.2015.

Measuring the growth rate of the largest moso shoot (only 1 shoot measured). I planned to measure the growth from 50 cm || 19.6 inches but bamboo was faster than me so I started at 110 cm. Measuring was started on April 29th.

Day	Size	Difference	Day	Size	Difference
1	110 cm  || 43.3 in	-	9	239 cm || 94 in	8 cm || 3,14 in
2	130 cm || 51.1 in	20 cm || 7.8 in	10	246 cm || 96,8 in	7 cm || 2,75 in
3	155 cm || 61 in	15 cm || 5.9 in	11	251 cm || 98,1 in	5 cm || 1,9 in
4	170 cm || 66.9 in	15 cm || 5.9 in	12	253 cm || 99,6 in	2 cm ||  0,78 in
5	182 cm || 71.6 in	12 cm || 4.7 in	13	--	--
6	196 cm || 77.1 in	14 cm || 5.5 in	14	--	--
7	214 cm || 84.2 in	18 cm || 7 in	15	--	--
8	231 cm || 90 in	17 cm || 6.6 in	16	--	--

Diameter was measured after the shoot has fully developed to it`s maximum height. It was measured at 10 cm || 4 inches above ground and diameter was 18,48 mm || 0,72 inches. Largest stem diameter from year 2014. measured 12,47 mm || 0,49 inches. So, this years increase in diameter is 6,01 mm || 0,24 inches 

2-3 plants were lost this winter and they didn`t regrew in the spring. These plants were weak to start with  so I didn`t expect from them to survive the winter. All others had a good shooting season and around 80% of bamboo has 1 or more canes that grew 170 cm || 67 inches or more. 

14.05.2015.

With time grass grew around the moso and I decided to leave it because it provided protection from rabbits and strong sun. Plan was to remove the grass after shooting but I kept on postponing it and that proved to be a good thing because of the drought that came later on. Grass was mowed in July. When shooting time started I applied some general purpose fertilizer to the entire area. Straw applied last year also acted as fertilizer.

04.06.2015.

June to August

From the last week of May until August it was, and still is, a pure torture to grow anything; drought began. Worst drought ever! On 3-4 occasions since then there was rain that only penetrated 1 cm || 0,4 inches into the ground which is nowhere near enough for the plants to grow normally. 

In July there were days when temperatures went up to 37°C || 98.6°F in the shade and well over 40°C || 104 in the sun. That did not reflect well on the bamboo. Most of the time their leafs were folded and to make the things worst I didn`t have water to give them. Tap water is expensive and reservoir for the rainwater emptied quickly since I had to water huge vegetable garden planted this year. Not even a drop-by-drop watering helped because the soil was too hot and a lot of plants simply died. Because of this drought I don`t expect some substantial shooting next year.

Mowing between the rows to make a shortcut to the rest of the garden :) (16.06.2015.)

16.06.2015.

On July 11th I finally removed the rest of the grass and few days later installed watering system. It didn`t help much but it delivered some water to the root. Every watering gives bamboo 1300 liters || 343 gallons of a water total.

In the second part of the July I managed to gather some money to buy a deep well water pump with which I fill up the 7.5 m3 water reservoir (pond) and then distribute water to the garden and bamboo. That came late for this growing season but it is a long-term investment. 

Canes that are exposed to the sun turn yellow or brownish with time but the ones that are in shade stay nice and green.

15.07.2015.

03.08.2015.

August to December 2015

Summer was extremely dry an my watering effort did not help much since temperatures were very high and I was unable to water bamboo every day.

In August there were many days when temperatures were 35°C || 95°F in the shade and much higher in the open. What made the entire situation worst was the hot wind, As a result of that soil dried up much faster and there were days when bamboo had their leafs folded into needles. I couldn`t give them enough water everywhere where the roots were so folding up of the leafs was inevitable. 

First rain came August 20th and soaked the soil a little but that was not enough to compensate for the long period of drought. It was a positive thing for the bamboo but there was not enough rain to substantially soak the soil. So the days that followed were filled with hope there will be some more rain...and there was. Not much but enough for bamboo to get back to life and unfold their leafs.

It turned out that these high temperatures and drought had one positive effect on bamboo. None of the plants produced shoots this autumn. Usually shoots come up with the autumn rains and get destroyed by the frost or cold weather that follows soon after. Zero shoots is good because plants saved the energy for the next shooting season. 

I actually don`t remember such a hot year. Even in September temperatures were around 30°C || 86°F when in fact they should be much lower and accompanied with first frosts. In October we got a more normal autumn weather with colder, rainy days. Not cold as they should be but enough to mark the end of the drought and give us more or less normal weather.

26.10.2015.	26.10.2015.
24.12.2015.	24.12.2015.

24.12.2015.

 January to March 2016

In general this year we did not have very cold weather or much snow. That was good for the bamboo leafs because damage on them was not severe. 

If I remember correctly there were only 3 weeks of snow and the lowest temperature was -12°C || 10.4°F. First 10 cm || 4 in of snow came in January and it did good for the bamboo as it served as insulation. All in all, we got some 30 cm || 12 in of snow this winter. In February snow melted down exposing the bamboo to the cold but the good thing is that there was no significant cold. On these snow-less days temperature would go down to -7°C || 19°F or warmer. Some days temperatures went up to 17°C || 62°F. That was too warm for that part of the year but it was good for the bamboo. They got their "cold treatment" in the beginning of the year and now they were able to wake up and start producing food and preparing for the shooting season. It is said that bamboo benefits the cold weather and that dormancy with low temperatures makes them grow stronger and larger.

With March temperatures went up and very early we got a real warm, spring temperatures. In my opinion the warm weather came a little too soon so I`m hoping that this is not a sign that this year will be as hot as the last one. Either way, let`s just hope there will at least have a little more rain this year. 

March gave me opportunity to examine the rhizomes and the damage that rodents might have done. From what I`ve seen there was no damage on the superficial rhizomes but there were also no holes in the ground around the plants. 

That is it in this part of the bamboo diary. Year 2015. was marked with severe drought so I can just hope that there is no substantial damage to the plants and that they will have enough energy to produce nice healthy shoots in the 2016. I`m really sorry for not updating this post sooner but there was not much to write about. Looking into the sky and hoping for the rain is not that much interesting to read about. I did got a good advice from a reader and I will try to make it happen. Basically he told me that posting only photos is perfectly enough when I have nothing to write about. :) 

Part 5 will be opened in a few days and I will start with the measuring of the new shoots. First shoots appeared on March 19th and in combination with the warm weather we are having they are growing like crazy. 

Thanks to all of you who follow my mini research.