View Single Post
  #2   Report Post  
Old 26-05-2011, 03:18 PM
echinosum echinosum is offline
Registered User
 
First recorded activity by GardenBanter: Feb 2006
Location: Chalfont St Giles
Posts: 1,340
Default

Quote:
Originally Posted by Big Al 1875 View Post
Hi, we moved into a new home earlier this year and the garden contained a large bamboo of which type i am unsure.

It was starting to grow in places i didn't want (on my lawn and gravel path) so i decided it was best to get rid of it and was advised by my neighbour to put in the hard work and dig it out using a mattock.

True to his word this was very hard work but i did get rid of all that i could see, admitedly digging down about 12 inches only. Since then new shoots have started to sprout and when i dug down to find their roots found that there were still masses of the large roots remaining and traveling under the railways sleepers, which the previous incumbents had used as border.

I am now getting the feeling it will be impossible to remove it completely and it is even growing through the gaps in my decking.

Can anyone offer any advise of how to get rid of it? I read in an older thread that i should use Round Up after cutting off the new shoots. Is this the answer?
Bamboos vary in how easy they are to get rid of, from Ok-ish to nearly impossible. Yours sounds like it is not so aggressive - you doesn't sound like the kind taht has shoots coming up 20 feet away from the main clump one year and then 20 feet further again the next season. So maybe it won't be so bad for you. With the less aggressive bamboos, they will usually eventually give up if you keep removing the shoots. They are hungry plants and with no photosynthesis won't last long. With Round-Up (glyphosate), you need to find a way to get it to move into the roots. Normally this is done by spraying the leaves, but you haven't got any leaves any more, and I suspect you don't want to let it shoot up again so you have leaves to spray. Maybe if you paint it onto the freshly cut surface of the new shoots it might translocate into the roots.