Greetings from southern Maryland

Hi everyone, joining in because I just purchased an empty lot in southern Maryland that I'm hoping to (eventually, after lots of work) turn into a food forest.
I say eventually, because about 75% of the lot is socked in by bamboo...what have I gotten myself into??  Any advice appreciated!

Hi Lo.  I would start by getting a few panda bears.  Seriously though, we had a roughly 1000 SF patch of bamboo growing on our homestead when we bought it a few years ago.  Luckily, the following winter we had a nasty ice storm that actually bent all of the canes over and made it a lot easier to get in the thicket and cut the canes down with my chainsaw.  Because all of the stubs that were left sticking out of the ground would have raised holy hell with the lawn mower, I then went over the patch several times with my rotary cutter (bush hog) and tractor.  Now two years later I still see bamboo sprouting up in this area, but with mowing, it is slowly starting to turn back to lawn.  My point is that with persistence over the course of several years it CAN be eradicated!  Good luck!

Thanks Joshua, yes, it's going to be a several year process. I found that a chainsaw tends to get caught in the fibrousness of the bamboo, so I've been using a sawzall with pretty good effect. If I can get through all of the surface bamboo and then stay on top of any sprouts for the next few years, I'm hoping that will do it.
I'm also looking up recipes for pickled bamboo shoots, bamboo kimchi, stir fried bamboo...

Lo Biddle wrote:Thanks Joshua, yes, it's going to be a several year process. I found that a chainsaw tends to get caught in the fibrousness of the bamboo, so I've been using a sawzall with pretty good effect. If I can get through all of the surface bamboo and then stay on top of any sprouts for the next few years, I'm hoping that will do it.
I'm also looking up recipes for pickled bamboo shoots, bamboo kimchi, stir fried bamboo...

Yes, bamboo as food!  We put the young tender shoots in stir fry a few times as well!  And our puppy liked chewing on the young shoots too.

Hi Lo!  Welcome to the forums!

How big in diameter or height is your bamboo?  I compiled an A-Z list with dozens of ideas for bamboo projects over here:

https://permies.com/wiki/170341/Giant-Bamboo-wiki

As the old saying goes "the problem is the solution!"

My brother goes out into bamboo forests near where he lives in China and harvests the sprouts in the springtime. They basically pickle them for longer storage. I am mostly familiar with delicious braised bamboo shoots, either in stir fries or marinated in chili oil as a side. This is a nicely illustrated simple "how to" for harvesting them: https://lewisbamboo.com/pages/harvesting-bamboo-shoots

I also remember being blown away by the use of bamboo as scaffolding on really tall skyscrapers in Hong Kong, workers walking on it at dizzying heights! So you have a pretty great resource there for strong, flexible building materials. Not that you don't want to get it contained and controlled (I'm seeing more and more thick stands of it on roadsides when I travel to the SE US, kudzu all over again), but hopefully you can get value out of it in the meantime. I could imagine them being the stakes for a wattle fence or raised bed surround, trellising for vining plants, stakes for support, etc etc.

Bamboo is a wonderful plant for the right purposes and bad for other purposes.

Regardless of whether you are trying to eliminate it completely or simply push it back into some smaller boundaries, there are a few ways to do it.
- Get cattle and send them in there. It is especially valuable during winter time when it is the only green stuff to be found.
- Get a good high powered trimmer and put a cutting blade on it, like the stuff they have here: https://forestershop.com/bruschcutter-blades.html
- Chainsaws and Sawzalls work also, but they are a pain to stoop down low with
- Dig it up and sell it online. Bamboo is selling at really high prices for some reason. This is a total mystery to me since there is so much of it out there and everyone seems to think it multiplies too fast and they have too much of it.

Once the bamboo is down it is excellent biomass for any kind of mulching. You can use it for all sorts of construction and craft projects, garden trellises and poles, and long pokie sticks for various long pokie purposes.

Just be sure to mow, or run heavy grazing over it for the next several years or else it will just come right back up.

Hi all, thank you so much for your responses and great information. It's really helpful.
Unfortunately, grazing won't be an option in my area - although the local animal population have assisted in past years by nibbling the tops off of the shoots, stopping their growth. I'm planning to get rid of all of it on my property - there are a couple of other stands in the neighborhood for me to use if I need any for projects or food, but yes, in the meantime, I'm looking forward to seeing what I can do with the stuff I cut down. It's starting to cool down a bit here, so I'm getting ready to really dig in.
I'll keep you all posted on my progress!

I wonder if it would chop up in one of those cheap wood chippers then you could just do a little at a time. That’s how I got rid of a huge patch of forsythia once. I would leave some so you have a never ending supply of biomass

Thomas Pate wrote:I wonder if it would chop up in one of those cheap wood chippers then you could just do a little at a time. That’s how I got rid of a huge patch of forsythia once. I would leave some so you have a never ending supply of biomass

I was about to add that, yeah. Since bamboo grows so fast, AND it doesn't re-sprout from the cut stems (looking at you, Wisteria), leaving an area to grow for regular harvesting of leaves & woodchips could be very helpful for mass composting & mulching.  Bamboo has much lower nitrogen drawdown compared to wood, especially when applied fresh.

In another thread, some folks were talking about the solid protein content in Bamboo leaves, and how the leaves are pretty decent evergreen forage for several domestic animals overwinter.

Dried & split bamboo also burns fast & hot. It's excellent kindling, and can be harvested in bulk very quickly.  Turn your bamboo forest into a massive firewood stockpile.

Regarding Harvesting: most people I've observed who work with bamboo full-time prefer to use a machete or loppers. Fast hacking cuts just to topple the culm, or a rough snip, and using a saw for later precision work turning it into something. Less work per-stalk, since you have to go through a LOT of culms to clear bamboo

If you're just looking to enrich the soil & chop down the bamboo, you COULD mulch all the culms you cut down, and make the whole place a giant pile of bamboo mulch haha~  Get a few truckloads of manure in there, and you've got yourself a lot of compost!

--

Cons of keeping the bamboo:

Thirsty bois.  Bamboo thickets tend to smother out other plant life within the root zone, not just due to the shade and thick mat of roots, but because they're aggressive water-suckers and other plants can't keep up.
Fast & invasive growth - you probably have running bamboo. True clumping bamboo wouldn't have spread like that unless it had decades and decades.  So, if you don't get rid of it entirely, you're going to keep dealing with it year after year.
So, for this specific type of bamboo - getting rid if it all is probably the best choice in the long-run, BUT you still have lots of options to put it to use as you tear it down =)

Toko Aakster wrote:

Thomas Pate wrote:I wonder if it would chop up in one of those cheap wood chippers then you could just do a little at a time. That’s how I got rid of a huge patch of forsythia once. I would leave some so you have a never ending supply of biomass

Regarding Harvesting: most people I've observed who work with bamboo full-time prefer to use a machete or loppers. Fast hacking cuts just to topple the culm, or a rough snip, and using a saw for later precision work turning it into something. Less work per-stalk, since you have to go through a LOT of culms to clear bamboo

Hi Toko, what kind of loppers are they using? I have a set that works well on the smaller canes but they're not big enough to cut the larger ones. Also, I'm not sure I have the physical heft to make a machete work for me, as much fun as that sounds to whack my way through the bamboo forest. That stuff is hard!
You're definitely right about it being invasive and choking out any other plants, which is the main reason I want to get rid of it and replace it with natives and other non-invasive food/pollinator plants. There are other large stands in the neighborhood that I can easily harvest from without any issue if I need or want bamboo for projects, fuel, food, whatever (including one directly across the street ).  

Thomas, I'm intrigued by the wood chipper idea...that would make excellent mulch! Or compost!  

Thank you both for your ideas

I would try cutting them with an antique billhook (I think that’s what it’s called). I have a couple of them because I’m always buying antique tools whenever I see one in good shape

Thomas Pate wrote:I would try cutting them with an antique billhook (I think that’s what it’s called). I have a couple of them because I’m always buying antique tools whenever I see one in good shape

I’ve cut down small trees with them pretty easily

A nicely sharpened hand saw pruner works wonders. I'm not sure if that's the "billhook" thing mentioned, might be?

I'd love to have a bunch of bamboo to do things like this below.  Fencing, trellises, even a whole greenhouse!

Greenhouse in Ecuador made of bamboo