From: Michael Vanecek Date: Mon Jun 23, 2003 10:57 pm Subject: bamboo rhizomes The bamboo rhizomes I dug up seems to have survived. Well, day two anyway. I need to plant them here pretty quick. A bucket of water does not make a good home for bamboo. A few more of those and a few years and I'll have a wall of bamboo to give us some privacy. Oh...a 12" deep by 12" wide trench and a pair of snips is all that's needed to control the spread of these guys. Seriously. Trench the bed and snip any rhizome that pokes through periodically. Behind the cut new tips will branch out and go *along* the trench and not across it. Amazing. Much more effective than those 3' deep plastic barriers - a solid barrier motivates the rhizome to go up or down - and if down it can breach the bottom of the barrier and go under. Now...a slanting barrier can help motivate the tips upward. Anyway, a trench is just air. The rhizome tries to cross it at it's comfortable depth. When cut, the branches go along it since there's no barrier to motivate it to go down. Pretty neat. Have fun, Mike