Originally Posted by Alan Silverman

I've uploaded pictures of my bamboo. Can anyone tell me what type it is? It’s probably 25 foot tall now and an inch and a half thick, but it gets to least 30-40 foot tall and two inches thick.

I live in the mid-Hudson Valley of New York. This patch is around 15 years old. Maybe 150' long and 60' wide at the widest. It seems much more vigorous recently. Maybe because we literally didn’t get winter last year (global warming?) Now I think it’s time to limit its spread.

It's July and I'm getting small leaves sprouting in the lawn, in lines up to 20-25 feet from the patch. I've thought about severing the roots and then mowing them. Or should I just mow them down? I’ve added a picture of the sprouts in the lawn.

On three sides of the patch there’s lawn or field. If mowing alone keeps them in check then limiting the patches spread should be fairly easy. On the fourth side, around thirty feet from the edge of the patch is a stone wall of the old New England variety. Lots of rocks piled on top of each other. The rock walls/pile of rocks is quite wide in some parts, probably 10-15 feet wide. I've thought about just letting the patch grow to the walls. Will the wall contain it? This is out in the country with the nearest house several hundred feet away, but I want to be responsible about not allowing it to get onto neighbor’s property. I've uploaded some pictures of the wall.

The land is very rocky. I was thinking of getting a tool to slice off the roots underground. What would accomplish this most easily? I was thinking of going up to $125 for such a tool, but if there are electric or gas driven tools that might do the job better, I'm curious about them too. I'm 65 years old and working with the bamboo isn’t going to get any easier physically.

Here are two links for tools from Gemplers.
Groundshark D-handle Shovel - GEMPLER'S

Heavy-Duty Root Cutter, 101239 | Ben Meadows

What do you think?

Thank you,
Alan Silverman