moso bamboo update april 24/2024

[@elfwithabike]

I personally like your forest. What was the bamboo you liked? I am in central Oklahoma and will be trying to grow something like you have there i bought moso this year but plan to have 3 to 4 different types.

[@inharmonywithearth9982]

The most winter hardy and vigorous is yellow groove. It gets big enough to use its timber even in a zone 7A cold climate just fine. It's the best for cold for its size. Vivax is the biggest you'll be able to grow without worrying about cold winters in Oklahoma. Moso just dies most winters and is quite stupid. It sends up its only shoots before freezing is even over . Most winters it gets below 8 degrees Fahrenheit and it dies to the ground only to send up thin stalks that only grow 10 feet tall. Sometimes it'll not get below 8 degrees all winter and I'll get lucky and have no surprise late spring freezes and if that happens 5 years moso will get big but the 6th winter the Grove dies. I am sorry I bought moso. I drove long distance to buy its huge clump and got cheated.

[@elfwithabike]

@inharmonywithearth9982 Thank you for your reply. I will get some of both you mentioned and try it out.

[@rajender13]

How does it perform in colder climate conditions? I live in Himalaya mountain range. With maximum snowfall of upto 12 inches at one time and only 2 or 3 snowfall per year.

[@inharmonywithearth9982]

@rajender13 An entire Moso forest will die at -15 °Celsius /°5 Fahrenheit. The young shoots, which only come once a year, die at 0° Celsius/ 32° Fahrenheit. Snow does no harm. I am in USA and I go by USDA cold hardiness zones. I am in 7b, and it is not cold hardy enough to be healthy here unfortunately.

[@rajender13]

@inharmonywithearth9982 thanks, that helps a lot, I think we rarely touch-7 or-8°c...

[@rajender13]

@inharmonywithearth9982 by USDA I think I am in 7a.

[@inharmonywithearth9982]

@rajender13 Sadly, I think you are just a little too cold for Moso.

[@palmdaddy]

Yeah I’m in 8b and have worries as we sometimes get down to -11C with a polar vortex outbreak

[@inharmonywithearth9982]

@palmdaddy All of the various kinds of running bamboo can easily take -13 C with no damage but no colder. You should be fine there if you never get a late freeze when they send up their shoots in springtime.

[@chiefetwful]

Wow, sure did take a hit from what it use to produce

[@inharmonywithearth9982]

Yes ! It sure isn't capable of growing in zone 7b. I made a mistake believing what they write. Lewis Bamboo writes YES it will grow in my area and it will get 75 feet in my zip code . What a joke and the jokes on ME!

[@BryanParker-m1m]

May I ask where in the US you are? I'm attempting to grow moso and I am also in 7b in Virginia, but this past winter it only got down to 12F while for you it got all the way down to 0F. To me it sounds like you should be in a colder climate zone if you're dealing with these top-killing events enough for most of the moso to die off, because here it's very unusual for the temperature to get into the single digits in the winter, which is where damage to moso seems to start.

[@inharmonywithearth9982]

@@BryanParker-m1m I am in northwest Arkansas 7b. 7b is supposed to rarely go down to 5 degrees in winter. Moso dies at 5 degrees and late freezes kill that years spring shoots. It's a sub tropical bamboo. It doesn't ever stay dormant long enough to survive 7b Because It always stupidly wakes up and starts growing in late March and we always get another killing hard freeze in April that kills its new shoots. Nearly 20 years of pampering it and it's still not established and has been dying. It needs more Summer rain than other bamboo. Its the only bamboo that stresses me out every single year. My only worry on the other bamboo is when they finally bloom because they will all die once they bloom but that shouldn't happen for a few more years or hopefully a decade or longer yet. The government changed my zone to 8a this year but I think it should be changed to 7a because you are right 7b should never get below 5 degrees and it's been getting below 5 alot of recent winters. It will be warmer and dryer than normal all winter then right when January changes to February somewhere it gets zero or below in the early morning 2 or 3 mornings. Summer sees 100 ° every year now and winter almost always below 5°. We don't get rain after June anymore. The skies are polluted with airplane exhaust so bad it never looks blue and I am sure that ruins the natural climate. I should just get a sailboat and forget this mess because it just keeps getting dryer and more polluted each year.

[@BryanParker-m1m]

I wonder if your proximity to the plains is the reason why you have such extreme temperatures. As far as I know the polar vortex commonly dips down into the plains in the winter, which causes really cold temps in the northern part but also in the southern part, like Texas in 2021. There isn't anything protecting you geographically from it either (apart from the Ozarks maybe) but here the Appalachians do a very good job of protecting us from winter storms that come from the north and west. I really hope your luck turns out with the moso in the future though, in your older videos it looks great compared to what it is now, and there's always the possibility that your streak of cold snaps could end.

[@slaik3088]

What are your thoughts for zone 9 for moso? What difficulties did you have in zone 7?

[@inharmonywithearth9982]

@@slaik3088 zone 9 excellent but if I lived in that zone I'd grow figs and loquats and pomegranates. Bamboo is kind of like a giant lawn you can build things with if you have a splitter and are the craftsman type. Otherwise if you can grow so many other things you can eat and sell for more why Bamboo timber? Also Bamboo needs a lot of rainfall. It wont grow in dry summer areas. My difficulty is the dry summer with little rain from June to autumn frost and late spring freezes after the Bamboo begins growing. The shoots only grow once per year and only a few weeks. They are very tender and break very easily. Once bitten by an animal, Stepped on, or frosted that shoot dies and no other shoots will be back until next spring. If very many shoots are damaged the Bamboo will send up smaller shoots the next year. The ancient Chinese Bamboo farmers wrote about planting a bamboo grove ; the first year it sleeps, second year it creeps under ground, third year it leaps above ground. It takes a lot of patience.

[@watzegjemedaarnouvan]

Should i get moso or parvafolia or incence i dont have that much space but engh i want as big of a bamboo as posible but im afriad of early frosts taking i live in bergen norway wich would you recomend i could also get vivax mcclure idk much about that varety. The avrage latest frost is 22 april

[@inharmonywithearth9982]

I am very sorry that I even bought moso. It dies whenever winter drops to 8° Fahrenheit or anything colder. It sends up its only shoots every year before freezes are even over and these shoots die too. If you want a problem free cold hardy AGGRESSIVE timber bamboo for winters that can get Zero degrees Fahrenheit and that waits intelligently before sending up its only spring shoots yellow groove is the right one. Yellow Groove gets big enough to split and make things with. It's very tall and strong. It is industrial strength tall timber. It's not even nearly as fat as moso can get in a tropical region but its the best we can do in places that can sometimes freeze until mid to late April . Moso needs winters that rarely freeze at all and only freezing while moso is completely dormant. I've had moso almost 20 years and it's never established here in my USDA cold hardiness zone 7b climate because it's simply too cold here.

[@watzegjemedaarnouvan]

@@inharmonywithearth9982 I think il be going for vivax is that beter`?

[@inharmonywithearth9982]

@watzegjemedaarnouvan Yes, vivax is a better choice because it makes very wide poles. It is a much shorter bamboo though. It is almost as hardy as yellow groove. You will be very happy with its magnificent size. It has thinner wood though.

[@TheGeorgiaMediaGroup]

How is pigskin doing

[@chiefetwful]

My vivax is doing well