Bamboo

[Deleted]

Bamboo is in the grass family,it is one of the most resilient and utilitarian plants in the plant kingdom.
Before the big freeze here last month,one of my more eccentric clients had asked me to harvest his large grove of bamboo and help him to design a "carport". (This is where the eccentric part comes in).
We cut down the bamboo,(you can see the small grove aside the driveway)and then set out to build this structure. When I asked him about covering it,he said he wanted to think about it. When I went over there to visit this weekend,here it still stands as we left it in November.I do not think he is planning on covering it.

[bixaorellana]

I am mailing you a miner's helmet so you can go over in the dark of night & plant some mirliton, morning glories, etc.

Actually, the only thing wrong with it is its location, which is eccentric in relation to the house.

I have two clumps of bamboo which were in their pots for so long that the roots grew into an inpenetrable spiral. They're in very poor ground now, but seem to want to make it. I think I accidentally made tall bonsai bamboo -- the stalks stay skinny.

[Deleted]

That is the pool house you see,the main house is out of view,otherwise I would agree.
I think he will come around to planting some vines on it. You'd have to know this guy to really understand that he is as stubborn as I am when it comes to others suggestions,particularly ones for improvement.
I have some other photos of it from other angles. My photo file thing is not working well tonight.
Bamboo is indeed amazing,I would like to do some more work with it.

[spindrift]

I'm very impressed with your handiwork. How did you fix the vertical poles in the ground? I like the appearance of the 'carport'. I can see that you took a lot of trouble doing it. You must be happy with the finished result. Well done.

I love bamboo, in fact I adore it. I wonder whether a bamboo 'room' in my garden would be a good thing.

[bixaorellana]

Looking at the pattern created by the sun shining through the palms overhead and the bamboo poles on top, I can see how your client is reluctant to cover it up.

[Deleted]

Ok(,here's the others), Thanks Spindrift,I really enjoyed working with the raw material. The bamboo which we used is pictured,it was really,really hard to harvest while still green like that I have to tell you.And you can see how big it is,my god! ( I have some saved for a totally different project for my own garden,a walkway,laid down flat.(Am still toying with design patterns).
Anyway,the bamboo is anchored into the ground inside metal piping that we drove in.
The design itself is a collaboration,we went back and forth and back and forth...I mostly won out,but there was a lot of painstaking(no pun intended...)perseverating that went on.
After seeing it this past weekend Bixa,I am reluctant to see it covered either.
At the finish of the job,I couldn't have gotten out of there fast enough it was such an ordeal.

Spindrift,there are a gazillion kinds of bamboo.Research REAL well before considering,please!!!

[Deleted]

I am a big fan of bamboo, but I do not think I approve of using it for scaffolding, as I have seen on skyscrapers in Hong Kong (so I suppose the cities of China are the same).

[Deleted]

This very cool sculpture was on display at the Miami Beach Botanical Gardens. I examined it real closely,saw that is was held in place by steel cables and bolts that ran through holes strategically drilled into the bamboo. It was camouflaged real well. I have a slew of lengths of bamboo,not quite this large in diameter,that I may try to do something similar with.

[bixaorellana]

This is sort of on the subject ......

A couple of days ago, I was given a lovely skirt. It's sort of a heavy, very soft jersey material. When I checked the label, I was amazed to find that almost half of the fabric content is bamboo!

44% bamboo, 43% cotton, 9% soybean, 4% spandex.

[bixaorellana]

This morning I read a magazine article telling how one could take a course (in Brooklyn, NY) for @$950 to learn how to build a bamboo bike.
~?~

I looked it up online, and forsooth ~~

Click pic for more info & access to the American Bamboo Society.

This guy actually built a bamboo bike. He provides instructions and links to related subjects. The comments on his site are well worth reading.

One of his links it to this fun and fascinating site:
<-- click!

[bjd]

I bought some (black) bamboo socks in Berlin this year.

The few people I know who have planted bamboo in their gardens here have regretted it because it grows really fast and because it rapidly becomes invasive and is hard to get rid of.

[onlymark]

I thought I'd just mention that when you want to drive a truck through the Congo, after the first kilometer, knowing there are many more to go, you begin to detest bamboo, especially the thick hard green ones -




But then you eventually fight your way through to the end, maybe after several days of all sorts of vegetation -

[Deleted]

Oddly enough, I never think of bamboo in Africa. I always think of it in Asia. (I mean besides the bamboo that has perhaps been foolishly imported to other parts of the world.)

[hwinpp]

Whenever I think of bamboo I also think of the Chinese 'bamboo bed'.

SPOILER: Click to show

Whoever was sentenced to it was tied to a bed of slatted bamboo and then bamboo was planted under the bed

Ok, lets not drift off now ;D

[bixaorellana]

Aaaawwwggghh ~~ I wish I hadn't read that!

Here's a little bamboo story ~~

I had two big pots of bamboo. They'd been in their pots since 1999 and are probably semi-bonsaied. When I moved to my last house in Easter of 2009, I planted them in the ground -- bad, gritty soil. One of them never did well, but the other was quite nice due to all the rain we had this year.

I couldn't bear to leave it when I moved, so dug it up. Then I sawed and hacked off some of the roots in order to stuff it into the pot. I also got as much dirt off the root ball as possible and didn't put any dirt into the pot. It's been there for @2 weeks now, getting nothing but water. It's thriving!

[hwinpp]

Fixed it ;D

[myrt]

I have a similar story, Bixa. We have a gorgeous stand of Bamboo in the garden where I work. It isn't too invasive but last year I dug up an errant chunk of it and brought it home in an empty compost bag. Erm, it's sat in that same bag in the corner of my greenhouse ever since and appears to love it! It's putting out new growth anyway....tough old plant! Maybe I should put it in a decent pot soon though....

[tod2]

Has anyone heard the massive explosions that take place when bamboo is set alight I believe steam builds up in the tubular stems and explodes under pressure.

[myrt]

Crumbs! Is that true? That's amazing........

[tod2]

Well I thought grenades were exploding over the road on the farm - it was the days of lots of gunfire, explosions and ruff stuff back in the '80's - but it was a massive fire in a bunch of bamboo./bamboos/bambii ;D

[tod2]

I have to pass this clump of bamboo on the way to one of our local supermarkets. They are growing next to the road on property belonging to the District Veterinary Laboratories.