When I lived in town with my family, I had a jogging route part of which was on a brick road on a steep hill. On the corner was a beautifully landscaped home of many fruits and ornamentals including a nice clump of bamboo. At that time it was not a plant you normally see in southwestern Michigan. The bamboo provided privacy and sound buffering to the front and side yards. It easily grew up to the second story window. Just by luck, I met the owner when he visited my farm and agreed to give me a tour of his yard. The bamboo was contained within a small area yet provided a huge benefit to the house and occupants. He invited me over for meditation which was scheduled for four hours on a Sunday. This was a bit long for my family life but I thanked him profusely. Later I hired someone for my farm who rented a portion of the house and lived there. He said it was a wonderful shade from the plant all throughout the house especially when the wind blew. You could see the design patterns of the leaves on the walls within the house. It was accompanied by the music of many birds who perched within it. Decades later in another cosmic twist of fate, I happened to be at a nearby garden center when I overheard one of the employees talk about ‘killing the bamboo’ for a customer. I asked and soon found out the new owners of that same home were not fans of the bamboo. The employee told me bamboo was a dangerous invasive plant and very hard to get rid. It required multiple applications of a specific herbicide to kill. This highlights the love-hate relationship people have with bamboo. One year the plant is loved and cherished as a glorious landscape plant filled with cosmic possibilities. On Sundays incense and four hour meditations are within its vicinity. Songs of birds flooded the streets. The next day it’s dangerous and a destroyer of all things good. Toxic chemicals are needed to remove it entirely. Today a little planting of coneflowers sits near the curb with a sprinkling of coreopsis marking the end of an era.
“Hello, my name is Bob and I love bamboo.” Over heard from a bamboo support group.
Early on in my nursery I thought of the bamboo as impossible to grow in my climate. Cold hardiness was a big issue. Plants were never seed produced and involved large equipment to dig and transplant due to the massive root systems. I kept trying to purchase bulk roots but they were always low quality and died during the first winter. Eventually I purchased the indigenous North American River cane bamboo. It had a more secure Zone 5 hardiness. I noticed that even mentioning I was going to plant bamboo created quite a stir of emotions. I love personal experience, good, bad or indifferent and the bamboo didn’t disappoint. I kept my love of it secret and told few. I really didn’t want to argue about its merits or food value from the sprouts.
My main question to folks dishing out advice is “have you ever tried to grow the bamboo?” And if yes, “what kind was it?” The devil was in the details. Most people had only heard of its effects in odd sorts of ways and had no direct experience. Eventually I began the process of producing River cane in my nursery from roots. It was slow to harvest and I had to extract soil with the roots to make it work as well as root prune the plants the year before digging. I had two forms of it. The Massachusetts selection was very uniform in spreading which produced linear roots with evenly spaced canes. I grew it on a sandy hillside which is the opposite of its native haunt of river bottomland. The second selection I obtained was a form found in North America which had even greater cold hardiness and runner production. Both of these selections produced delicious sprouts in the spring. I had to limit the sales to twenty plants per year to keep my planting from disappearing entirely. Bamboo was becoming popular again with new varieties entering the marketplace too. There was less guilt associated with the clumping bamboo varieties. There was also correct ways to install the plant like my friend who lived on the brick road.
As time went on in my nursery life, I soon found several opportunities to develop cold hardy selections of a couple of species using seed produced plants. The way to do this is quite simple. It is similar to taking any zone 6 or 7 woody plant seedling and finding hardier selections in zone 5. I would grow a few hundred seedlings in an open polyhouse and let winter take its toll. The remainder of the seedlings would then be planted outside as a source of genetically different bamboo. The way bamboo is produced today is the opposite of this. They are all rooted from clones whether it is the clumping forms or runner types. Bamboo also has its own 6 mil weed barrier to prevent the runners from running and moving into unwanted real estate. It’s a whole production system. Yet beyond the landscape it does have the power to transform and have great positive environmental benefits. It could be ‘safe to use as directed’ and still be be a great part of agroforestry. This is where I left off with my research.
The seed of bamboo became available commercially and it was possible to obtain it here in the U.S. However, a law was put into place banning its import eventually reducing the available seed on the market. It was a tricky little grass to germinate but once started a white clean root pops out from the embryo. I focused on two species, timber canes——Vivax bamboo and Edible Sprouts—- Edulis bamboo. There was quite a bit of loss during one winter at minus 17 F. I did manage to squeak out small populations of both species. After a decade of growing, it was not the bamboo I thought they would be. They did not take over the universe. My bamboo forest is more of a bamboo grassland than anything. Yet, even on a small scale and having a diversity of seedlings you can see the difference in the individual plants genetic make up. They easily integrated into my farm under the black walnuts and hybrid American chestnuts.
My goal was to develop construction grade varieties and edible shoot selections. I like the forest type bamboo growing upwards to 70 feet or more. It would take a larger population of 100,000 seedling plants to find hardier and even more robust selections. Bamboo in nature is often a specific clone like the clonal wild blueberry plant on the east coast that covers several acres. It is a specific application with a specific selection needed. Then you can harness the power of bamboo. It might not make a great landscape plant for you and like mint might ruin your flower garden state of mind. But as a source of commercial fiber, timber, lumber, plastic substitute, cotton substitute, flooring, scaffolding, chairs, tables, damn near everything and edible shoots we are on to something unbelievably powerful and life saving and life supporting. These selections could be employed and used to a greater degree in areas where scale, control and use would dominate the plantings in commercial settings. For vigor and health we need the runners of the world. Dense, solid roots holding the soil as a precious resource and slowly bringing back those soils currently filled with GMO corn and soybean. Those soils are ruined and may take a generation to cleanse themselves of the poisons we have put in them. Even if we treat it as a bamboo monoculture or develop it as a bamboo polyculture, it does not matter. Bamboo could easily purify those soils while making our life on planet earth easier and more productive. The power of bamboo is the power of grass. One sheath at a time, creating a forest of perennial possibilities while it forges us ahead in permanent tree crop agriculture.
Think it all started on a corner house on an old brick road.
Enjoy. Kenneth Asmus
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