10 easy ways to tell if your a Bamboo Geek...

If you couldn't tell by this blog site - I love bamboo.  So much, that it is kind of a nerdy obsession of mine.  I'm a Bamboo Geek, and I wear that label with pride.  Through the years I have met many like me.  It's comforting to know your not alone in this obsession over a giant grass.  So, how can you tell if you are a 'Bamboo Geek?'  Here are the top ten ways to diagnose it:

10.  The majority of your plants have Bambusa (large family of clumping bamboos that grow well in the Sacramento area) in the plant tag name.

9.  You know what the heck a Bambusa is.

8.  When your bamboo plant begins to shoot, you refer to the shoots as - 'my little babies.'  As in, "I can't wait for my little babies grow up!"

7.  You go to the zoo and take more pictures of the bamboo than you do of the animals (or maybe even your own children). The Sacramento Zoo has some of the nicest bamboo specimens around - but completely unlabeled.

6.  You can actually pronounce Phylostachys right, one of the largest family of running bamboos (the very popular Black Bamboo is a Phylostachys).

5.  You are a member of the American Bamboo Society (you know who you are).  Great organization by the way.

4.  You have more than three things in your house made out of bamboo.

3.  At a nursery, forget the Japanese Maples, forget the vegetables, you make a bee-line to the bamboo.

2.  You ask for a bamboo plant for your birthday.

1.  Your one of the few people that doesn't like Panda Bears (just kidding, I actually love them, but they are not invited to hang out at my house anytime soon).

Well?  You a Bamboo Geek?  If so, welcome, your in good company!

Sean
Mad Man Bamboo
(916) 300-6335
www.madmanbamboo.com
Mad Man Bamboo on Facebook
Twitter: @madmanbamboo

Irony... bamboo style (bamboo and pole vaulting)

I'm always drawn to bamboo history, after all history was one of my majors in college.  It was a subject that I thoroughly enjoyed and still do today.  But most often, I never have a personal tie to bamboo history, but tonight's post is different.


This brings me to a story about the world record pole vaulter Cornelius Warmerdam who used a bamboo pole throughout his pole vaulting career.  After setting many records, he was destined for the Olympics, in 1940 and 1944, but World War II led to those Olympics being cancelled.  


Warmerdam's pole vaulting career started modestly by pole vaulting in his backyard using the limb of a peach tree and landing in a pit of piled up dirt.  Warmerdam went on to make several pole vaulting records with his bamboo pole and was inducted into several halls of fame for his pole vaulting records.  He later became a track and field coach for Fresno State University and the stadium at the university was later named after Warmerdam.


Cornelius, known as "Dutch" to his friends, spent a good portion of this youth growing up in Hanford, California (where I was born and lived for my first 18 years) and graduated from Hanford High School, my alma mater.  I also went to Hanford High School with Catherine Warmerdam, which I suspect was a relative (not definite, but likely).  Catherine was a co-editor with me for Hanford High's Meteor student newspaper.  


The summer before I went off to college, my future wife and I worked for Catherine's family who owned a fruit packing shed (apples and stone fruit), making boxes and learning to drive a forklift (a scary thought).  That job taught me about hard work and gave me appreciation for how hard immigrants work for little pay to keep food on our plates.  Work that is unappreciated by most, but for a 18 year old, it was a life lesson I will never forget.


Warmerdam, coming from a modest background, broke records, all with a bamboo pole.  Can't help to appreciate this piece of history!


Cheers!


Sean
Mad Man Bamboo
(916) 300-6335
www.madmanbamboo.com
Mad Man Bamboo on Facebook
Twitter: @madmanbamboo

Guest Blog: Planting a Rooftop Garden

Today is a guest blog post on a topic that sparked a lot of interest when I blogged about it a few weeks ago - rooftop gardening.  I encountered some roof top gardens on a trip to San Francisco last Summer and it sparked my interest ever since.  Seems many more people are just as interested in the concept.

I invited Dontel Montelbaun, the lead writer for LiveToGarden.com, who also expressed interest in the topic, to write this article on rooftop gardens for our blog.  Enjoy!

Sean

Planting a Rooftop Garden


by Dontel Montelbaun; Lead writer for LiveToGarden.com


Rooftop gardens do more than make your roof or rooftop patio look good -- they can also save you money and benefit the environment. When planting your garden, you should know where to buy plants, what types there are and what they can do for you and the Earth.

Types of Plants

A variety of plants will thrive in rooftop gardens, but remember to plant only what you can maintain. You don't need to have high-maintenance plants, but they do require regular watering (if it doesn't rain often enough). Planting hardy shrubs and surrounding them with seasonal bulbs is visually appealing and easy to maintain. 

Bamboo plants, such as Pseudosasa japonica and Phylostachys bissetti, are good for rooftop gardens because they can handle high winds; bamboo planted along the edge of your garden can even act as an environmentally sustainable privacy screen.

When choosing your plants, you need to know what your roof can handle structurally and how much sunlight the plants will get. If your roof can't handle a lot of extra weight, consider planting herbs and perennials. They require very little soil compared to shrubs and larger plants. 

Where to Buy Plants

Your local garden center and growers should be able to provide you with the plants you need. Find out what they keep in stock and see what looks healthy. Just like any plants you buy, those for your rooftop garden should come with planting instructions, such as required soil depth and amount of sunlight, that will help you take care of them. 

Rooftop Garden Sustainability 

Rooftop gardens are highly sustainable and increase your outdoor green space. They're a unique extra to any home or business and offer benefits that outweigh the cost. Rooftop gardens can:

• Decrease the amount of noise pollution by acting as sound barriers.
• Reduce rain runoff by absorbing precipitation.
• Act as a natural insulator, saving you money on heating and cooling and reducing your energy consumption.
• Reduce carbon dioxide and produce oxygen. 

Thanks to some of these benefits, rooftop gardens are increasingly being viewed as a way to fight climate change.

A Practical Choice for Homes or Businesses

Rooftop gardens do not require flat roofs. Even if your roof wasn't built for extra weight on top, check out the structural possibilities. Lightweight gardens are possible and are still beneficial to you and the environment.

Colorful bamboo plants

When most people think of bamboo, its usually an image of a tall green screen. What really got me into collecting bamboo about 10 or so years ago was its wide range of colors, each very unique in its own way. Your typical green bamboo is no doubt beautiful in its own way, but here is a gallery of some of my favorite colorful bamboo plants that will knock your socks off:

This is a cut culm of Himalayacalamus hookerianus 'Teague's Blue', named after the late Bill Teague, this colorful beauty is a clumping bamboo that needs afternoon shade in our Sacramento climate.

This is another photo of 'Teague's Blue' Bamboo.

This is Bambusa multiplex 'Alphonse Karr', a clumping bamboo that takes full sun and does very well in our Sacramento climate. This variety is ideal as a privacy hedge, but retains some ornamental beauty.

This is a running bamboo called Semiarundaria yashadake 'Kimmei'. This variety takes full sun and takes on a deep red-purple coloring when exposed to the sun. This variety does well as a container-grown bamboo. This is a photo I took this past week.

Himalayacalamus falconeri 'Damarapi' 'Candystripe Bamboo' is a afternoon-shade clumping bamboo that is a great ornamental. The colors shown here ironically are their brightest around the holidays.

This Borinda fungosa, a clumping bamboo that needs shade from our hot Sacramento afternoons. In the right place, this variety can serve as a privacy hedge as it is very dense. I've seen this variety informally referred to as 'Chocolate Bamboo.'

Last, but certainly not least, is Phylostachys nigra punctata 'Giant Black Bamboo.' Not colorful as in vibrant, but black is a color after all and this variety is very unique and very popular. This photo was taken by my friend and Bambutopia blogger, Gerhard Bock, of a plant in my collection. Used with permission.

If you ask most bamboo collectors or even the average gardener seeking to spice up their yard, bamboo offers a tremendous variety of texture, color and size opportunities. For me, the color is what got me hooked and many other people I know. Enjoy and don't get bit by the 'bamboo bug!'

Sean

Mad Man Bamboo

(916) 300-6335

www.madmanbamboo.com

Mad Man Bamboo on Facebook

Twitter - @madmanbamboo

Leaf litter from bamboo... more or less than the average tree?

As I raked leaves today, it reminded me of a question I get all the time from customers buying bamboo plants - 'Is bamboo a messy plant?' This is usually asked in the context of leaves and other plant litter dropping in a pool or in a landscape that is conspicuously maintained.

Compared to a deciduous tree that drops its leaves every Fall, my experience is that bamboo is a 'cleaner' plant'. Why? Bamboo tends to drop culm sheaths (a large one from a Bambusa oldhamii 'Giant Clumping Timber Bamboo' is pictured above side-by-side with my hand), some leaves from the plant (they shed and renew leaves throughout the year) and some dead branchlets that fall off cleanly at the nodes.

Based on my observation in my yard (looking at the row of non-deciduous Photinia bushes we have along the fence) and seeing other similar plants used for privacy, bamboo is equally, if not less messy than the average bush or tree used for privacy.

Bamboo leaf litter drops close to the base of the bamboo plant (most bamboos are pretty column-like in growth, compared to an average tree that tends to grow in a triangular form). Also, tree leaves are lighter, generally speaking, and are easily carried in the wind to areas of the yard where they are not wanted.

One item to note on leaf litter from bamboo, is that it is actually good to leave bamboo leaf litter at the base of the bamboo plant because that leaf litter contains a small amount of Silica which is important for the growth of the bamboo. In a sense, the bamboo plant is re-feeding itself an important element to its long-term growth - Silica.

Is bamboo mess-free? No. But, in my observation over the years it is equally, if not less messy, than many of the common trees and bushes used for privacy, plus its a much more interesting plant. Not that I'm biased...

Cheers!

Sean

Mad Man Bamboo

(916) 300-6335

www.madmanbamboo.com

Mad Man Bamboo on Facebook

Mad Man Bamboo on Twitter - @madmanbamboo

Break in the rain... is that the sun?

It was nice today to get a break from the rain. As we came home from a movie, a group of tiny birds were flying around in our Azalea bushes and the bamboo in the front yard (what we called 'Fat little Finch-like birds'; sorry to all those bird watchers for our made up name). I quickly grabbed a camera and got one shot, not great, but can you find the tiny bird?

Also checked out the rain barrel, which is brimming to the top, problem is, I can't find a plant that needs watering, oh well, might come in handy a few months from now.

And, as I headed in, I caught this shot of a very bright sun peering through our 'Alphonse Karr' bamboo. Nice to get a break from the rain and see some blue sky.

Cheers!

Sean

Mad Man Bamboo

(916) 300-6335

www.madmanbamboo.com

Mad Man Bamboo on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter - @madmanbamboo

Easy tip to detect a running bamboo plant...

It's inevitable that you walk into a garden center or nursery and among the thousands of plants there is a bamboo plant that is either vaguely labeled, mislabeled or or with no label at all. Something I actually witnessed at the local 'big box' store recently. The bamboo plant is beautiful, but why take the risk, if it could be a running bamboo. Well, there is a way you can distinguish a possibly invasive running bamboo from a non-invasive clumping bamboo.

Many running bamboo plants have a vertical groove, known as a sulcus (pictured above), that is on the side of the culm (or cane). Simply run your hand, around the culm, if there is a groove, it is definitely a runner. Clumping bamboo does not have a sulcus, they are smooth all around the diameter of the culm. This method cannot detect all running bamboo, but it can detect most.

Hope this tip is of use!

Sean

Mad Man Bamboo

(916) 300-6335

www.madmanbamboo.com

Mad Man Bamboo on Facebook

Twitter - @madmanbamboo