Jewell Hemenway

I have grown golden bamboo for about 30 years. Mine tends to be rather clumping in form, but I keep it fairly heavily harvested for garden trellises. The few times it has run I have pulled the runners back to the main plant and cut them off. I don't water it and the dogs have a path worn beside it with a six foot path between the fifteen foot long bamboo patch and a woodland perennial bed. Had neighbors on the north side of us that didn't mow their lawn for a couple of years. It did escape over there but with constant regular mowing it seems to be back under control.

From my experiences the bamboo trellises get brittle after a few years and do need to be replaced even if they aren't touching the ground.

Many people are very anti bamboo. If not maintained and harvested several times a year I guess it becomes a problem. I am just guessing that the regular harvesting is an important key to maintaining bamboo. I have enjoyed having such a readily available source of supports, fencing, trellis material. I also use it chopped with the mower for mulch.

Troy, that was my general observation...oh the joys of living as an urbanite. I was hoping that since I didn't mine the smell of bokashi processed waste it wouldn't be such a temptation to critters. Darn.

Any ideas what I am doing wrong? I have been attempting bokashi this last year. The fermenting process goes well. Veggie and chicken bones smelled and looked well pickled. Reminded me of the sell of silage for cattle. Some buckets did have to sit sealed outside for a few months before I could get to garden work. The trouble is when I tried to bury it in the garden for the final decomposing. My dogs found it irresistible. Even the liquid spilling on the soil would attract both dogs and flys.

I have put the last two buckets of fermented bokashi layered with soil in locking lidded metal garbage cans with air holes to avoid dogs eating or digging it up. Hopefully it will decompose enough for me to safely put it in the garden. If my dogs like it this much I know the rats, possums and raccoons will too. Am I the only one to have this problem with bokashi? About ready to just go back to only composting yard greens.

I planted my two year old high bush blueberries in a mix of fine composted bark with a little bit of compost. One grew over five feet tall the first year and the other over three feet tall. Like mentioned keep well watered the first year or so. In the wild huckleberries (a close relative to blueberries) grow on stumps in the Olympic Mts.. The largest blueberry bushes I have ever seen (15 feet tall) were grown in a cement pit where rotted logs had been tossed. With my older blueberry plants I have found that with time they will develop huge tree like roots and don't require watering in our dry season.

Good luck with whatever you choose to do. That stump will be looking good soon.

Am new to Hugelkultur, having stumbled across a blog that showed theirs. It was the perfect solution to my problem of filbert stumps taken out because of blight. This spring I threw some dirt onto the logs and stumps and started planting seeds and starts until it turned into a green mound.