Herself’s Houston Garden

I had purchased this as a house plant for the front hallway but there wasn’t enough light there to make it happy. It’s a cool bamboo, clumping and yellow culms with green vertical stripes.

It is supposed to be very easy to grow with 4″ culms that reach 50′ in height.

I’ve had him outside less than a week and already he’s perking back up.

Bamboo needs lots of water and wants lots of sun. I expect this guy will be impressive even in part shade and drier ground. It might help keep him tamed as well. This is a clumping bamboo not a running bamboo so it should not attack the neighbors.

It took a while, but this plant had put out some 20′x2″ culms and was doing great. Then we had several freezes and it died back to the ground breaking my heart. Just this week I saw some leaves poking up so it will come back after a hard freeze.

It is slow growing in the shade and the culms lean, in the sun it grows tall and thick rapidly. So far all these clumping bamboos I’ve put in have remained contained in tight clumps.

Watch for mealy bugs ( I just clean them off with a garden hose) and mites. Mites will have webbing and leaves will yellow. Use orange oil for them. Aphids and scale also attack bamboo and can be controlled with orange oil.

After the freezes in the winter of 2009/2010 this died back to the ground. New shoots began to appear early April.

See also Black Timor Bamboo entry for more information on growing bamboo here

Emerald Bamboo

This was purchased from Tropical Bamboo Nursery ( Sun Sentinel Story about the nursery ).