What to do with our bamboo????Reader submitted

Since our dad built our house this has been the bane of our existence! This bamboo just continues to grow and grow and take up more and more of our section. Great, you say – there are heaps of things you can do with bamboo...... not great, we say! Unfortunately this is not your typical bamboo – most commonly used for fencing, screens and to make cool and groovy things out of – this is a different bamboo (not sure where from, a brain fart from one of our neighbours a million years ago... grrrrr!) that's brittle and breaks easily when dried, and does not grow much past 40mm in diameter. We've tried drying and using our bamboo for fencing (falls apart when you screw, tie or nail it together), we've tried using it for garden stakes for our vege garden (so brittle it splits and then falls over with the weight of the plant). We even tried offering it to Auckland Zoo for the animals – but even they didn't want it!.

So, does anyone have any ideas as to what we can do with this bamboo? We have so much of it there must be something we can use it for?

 

14/11/2012  12:50 am  by Greg Roughan - Editor Green Ideas

Eat it! Well, I've heard that eating bamboo is the best way to control it– BUT this may depend on what variety you have. I've heard vague things about bamboo having low levels of cyanide, so I would do some research first, but I'm sure it can be cooked out and eaten safely. After all, bamboo shoots are a staple of Asian cuisines. If you get hooked on it you'll be chopping off the tender shoots before they get too long. Otherwise I think making jousting sticks is your only option...

 

14/11/2012  1:27 am  by curlymoo

LOL I actually make a mean red Thai chicken curry with bamboo shoots – and yes, I did check to see if ours was edible! But unfortunately not, it’s a weird type that sends runners almost to the other side of our section under the ground – by the time it breaks through the ground it is stringy and has to be mown or weed whacked out (it then immediately reappears within days). It has even broken through one of our tin garden surrounds. :0(

I have a fond memory of my mum and dad on their hands and knees, with an old-fashioned hand drill – Dad, drilling holes in the base of the bamboo and mum deftly squirting petrol in the teeny weeny hole. It would take them days just to do a small patch (and still didn't actually do anything) and I would laugh! Not laughing so hard now… jousting sticks it is!!!

 

08/02/2013  8:59 am  by Tui

You have my sympathy. It sounds like a scourge that will take a lot of effort to eradicate. Have you investigated poison? I don't usually like the idea but had to recently kill a weed tree that was sending its roots huge distances, including through the neighbour’s water pipes.

 

21/03/2013  9:30 pm  by John P

I'd suggest you get rid of it. You could get a contractor with a stump grinder to get it at least to ground level, maybe rip up the roots depending on rocks etc in the ground (bamboo is shallow rooted). I've seen this done. Then, when it reshoots, snap the shoots off when they are small and soft. I've heard about this method but not seen it done.