Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Douglas
I think you need to kill the stuff first. A garden centre will sell you something strong and effective.
If it's not killed off and just chopped back (including your best efforts at root removal), you'll get a guaranteed bumper crop of it next year.
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my experience is opposite. once a bamboo root dies and dries, it hardens like iron. a green root (its a rhizome actually) is more easily to chop thru. they make a tool that is like a digging bar with a sharpened spade end. it has a heavy slide hammer over the shaft and you use it to blast thru the rhizomes, and the bar is long enough to leverage it out. I'm unhealthy mentally and border on OCD. which is a GOOD THING battling bamboo. have the landowner forget any ideas of replanting that area for a year, easy. dig dig, chop, pry. and dig dig, cuss. BEST you can. then settle in for the long haul. the BEST thing about bamboo is it fights for survival. it will shoot up baby shoots as soon as possible. this allows you to walk the area with a digging bar and pulling up rhizomes that you missed. a chunk the size of a lemon will send out a shoot.
killing bamboo is kinda easy. cut the think close to the ground, and spray the blunt end with a spray bottle full of high octane roundup. save this info for that piece that is growing under some area you can't dig out. like a fence post foundation.
I talked to a pro bamboo gardener, and he said he uses a chainsaw with a carbide chain. I think it would still dull out when you plunge it into the earth to cut a rhizome.
and there is something very satisfying about cutting a rhizome, and pulling it up and you kinda zippering out a 10 foot section. will you need to go into a neighbor's yard?