Black Bamboo culms — Phyllostachys niger
No need to fear bamboo—it isn’t going to “take over.” Now that gardeners are finding out how useful bamboo can be for staking up peas, beans and tomatoes and for making a more private garden yard, they can see that the effort to keep on friendly terms with this big grass is well worth it.
Bamboo can be either “running” or “clumping” and both do fine in a container. The running style gives the look many of us are trying to achieve and provides plenty of 3-year and older canes for uses such as curtain rods, fishing poles and trellises. Supervising the escape-artist rhizome is worth planning a strategy to contain it.
Bamboo comes in many sizes and colors. It is also useful as an evergreen hedge and for shading your property. Bamboo canes (culms) can be used as poles for temporary structures such as yurts, tents and tipis, if one knows how to harvest and dry them. Pictured is a Black Bamboo which is a running style and very pleasant. Very young culms are edible!
Click here to go to the Bamboo Section of the Main Street Trees website, for photos and descriptions of more bamboo species.
Growing a lot of what you eat can be a pleasant way to live. Gardening can be a lifestyle choice where you get your exercise, fresh air, sunshine, a visit with nature and food for eating and sharing. Even if you rent or are moving soon you can have a container garden that can move when you do. Thinking of expanding your fruit trees soon? You can keep your fruit trees small enough to pick the fruit and prune without a ladder if you train it to be small and keeping it in a container is one way of dwarfing it.
