Battling the bamboo

Before all the excitement of my going outside and now expecting a visitor, I was talking about birds in the bamboo. For continuity, I was planning to stay on the subject of bamboo and talk about how to keep it under control. So, if you've all recovered from the drama of yesterday's noon walk, I'll pick up where I left off.

You will have seen Lisbeth's big patch of bamboo (post for Friday 11th May). There are lots of different types and according to Lisbeth the one here, in this garden, is particularly voracious. When she first moved in, it was pretty much out of control. The roots were running right across the neighbour's garden and she would find great rolls of them leaning by the fence on her return. On the opposite side, the roots were also heading off in every direction into her own garden in a sort of vegetarian version of Dune.

If the young shoots you can see in the photo (up against her neighbour's fence) are not cut down, they will grow anything from 12-18 or even 20 feet high. Cutting them off will make it look tidy but the 'Dune effect', below ground, will be busy creating even more for the following year.

So what Lisbeth did was:

• Made a trench, just under a meter deep (and wide enough to stand in) around a section that she wanted to keep
  
• Put a strip of special thick plastic in all the way round. (It comes in long lengths and is a meter wide)
  
• The plastic was positioned at an angle of 15 degrees (sloping outwards) leaving 3-4 inches showing above ground
  
• The join was tightly held together with metal strips
  
• The earth that holds the plastic in place was very firmly tamped down so that the plastic can't move from its 15 degree angle.
• She then poisoned (several times!) or dug up all the bamboo outside the plastic.
  

Eh voila!

I'll see if I can find some more photos for tomorrow.