Bamboo As Feedstock?

I like the idea of growing a good chunk of bamboo in order to dry, then use as feedstock for biochar/charcoal.

However, I'm not sure how practical it would be in the end. Bamboo does not seem dense, so it would likely suffer from low overall yield. At the same time, it could replenished super fast. Contrarily, a properly managed wood lot would be much easier due to it being "conventional," but at the same time bamboo is a lot easier to harvest by hand.


I don't know, my brain is just exploding with this idea (add and I get obsessed with permaculture stuff!) So I would appreciate any input! Thank you!

Bamboo is great for making compost from the leaves, and timber from the canes. It would also be an excellent source of charcoal.

Bamboo is notoriously low in nutrient value from a digestion standpoint, so would be considered primarily 'roughage' for most agricultural animals - not something that they could survive off of easily.

Bamboo actually makes great biochar.

I’ve fed the leaves off of thousands of culms to livestock for years.  Mainly sheep, goats and a couple beeves. Muscovy ducks even enjoyed the leaves. From there, I make biochar out of the remaining material.  There are a few posts about it in my biochar thread below.  

The animals show little to no interest in it during the warmest months, but once it gets cool, they relish it.  My hypothesis is that the plant sends sugar up into the leaves as antifreeze, as the leaves are evergreen.  I have not confirmed this, but I did send a forage sample off for analysis which showed very favorable protein content, around 16% if I recall correctly.

Biggest downfall to this method is that it is labor intensive to cut and move the culms.  I have two teenage sons that help me, but once they have moved on, I am not sure how much I will do by myself.  

If you plan to rely on it as a regular feed source, make sure you plant multiple varieties as they occasionally bloom and die back (or completely) at different intervals.  Lots of black bamboo (p. nigra) is blooming right now, including mine and another member’s.

Went back and found my report, crude protein was 19.75% on a dry matter basis, variety was yellow groove, which was the one the USDA distributed specifically for forage around the 50’s..  

The full report

Some more info on bamboo as forage:

https://www.ars.usda.gov/ARSUserFiles/13151/Nutritive%20Quality%20of%20%20Bamboo.pdf

http://www.bamboodirect.com/bamboo/info/Bamboo%20as%20Forage.pdf

Thanks to all who commented. I am actually interested in using bamboo as feed for cows, goats, etc. Leafy bamboo is a cultivar (think that's the name) that might be particularly good for this.

However, I don't think my title was clear.

I want to know if bamboo will make good charcoal. If it is worth planting bamboo in order to harvest it, dry it, then turn it into charcoal. I also want to know if it is worth it in terms of doing this with hardwood.

Riley Smith wrote:Thanks to all who commented. I am actually interested in using bamboo as feed for cows, goats, etc. Leafy bamboo is a cultivar (think that's the name) that might be particularly good for this.

However, I don't think my title was clear.

I want to know if bamboo will make good charcoal. If it is worth planting bamboo in order to harvest it, dry it, then turn it into charcoal. I also want to know if it is worth it in terms of doing this with hardwood.

I use an open burn/quench method to turn my bamboo into biochar.  Takes a little work to get green bamboo lit (I use a weed burner) but once it is you can char as much green bamboo as you want without any need to dry it down.  Wish I had a pic of my bamboo remains from last winter.  I gave my 1/2 acre or so grove a much needed thinning and was able to make around 400-500 gallons of biochar with the thinnings.  Only problem with this is that if you didn’t feed the leaves and burned them, you would be losing a lot of nitrogen.  

We’ve also used this method to make several hundred (thousands?) of gallons of biochar out of hardwood prunings. Works pretty much like bamboo for anything under 2” or so.  Larger wood takes longer and benefits from being split into smaller pieces, but this runs the labor requirement up,

I think bamboo should work fine as long as you dry it first.  Many herald the idea of only using secondary sources for turning into biochar, so if you were feeding the leaves and the stalks were left over, that would work fine.  I have to prune limbs of my orchard, so that's what I use.

John S
PDX OR

Experience speaking here: If you make biochar from bamboo in an open vessel (pit, kontiki, barrel etc.) have a guard around it and wear PPE. Even dry culms will generate gas and steam as they are heated and the partitions will explode. It's pretty dramatic with the bigger and harder pieces. But it makes a fantastic finished product, higher in silica than wood-derived biochars.

Riley Smith wrote:I like the idea of growing a good chunk of bamboo in order to dry, then use as feedstock for biochar/charcoal.

However, I'm not sure how practical it would be in the end. Bamboo does not seem dense, so it would likely suffer from low overall yield. At the same time, it could replenished super fast. Contrarily, a properly managed wood lot would be much easier due to it being "conventional," but at the same time bamboo is a lot easier to harvest by hand.


I don't know, my brain is just exploding with this idea (add and I get obsessed with permaculture stuff!) So I would appreciate any input! Thank you!

Depending on your location, if you live in the United States the two most common bamboo species found in the wild are the native river cane (Arundinaria gigantea) and invasive golden bamboo (Phyllostachys aurea). I'm not sure about the peak growth rate for river cane, but I remember reading that Phyllostachys aurea can have a peak growth rate of six inches to one foot per day during the hottest part of Summer. I still suspect that native Arundinaria gigantea has similar if not slightly slower peak growth rates than Phyllostachys aurea.

A property in Cincinnati that I plan on visiting this week might actually have a thicket of native bamboo near the south of the property. If so, I should be able to test the potential of this plant as a feedstock for biochar.