Caught a stat about how fast bamboo grows and it messed with my head

I was reading some gardening forum last night and saw someone mention bamboo can grow 35 inches in a single day under the right conditions... which just seems impossible. I've got a patch of it in my backyard that I've been fighting for years, so I looked it up and apparently certain species like Moso bamboo actually do that. Has anyone else had bamboo take over their yard faster than you could keep up with?

3 comments

3 Comments

corah756h ago

That's how life works, you blink and everything's already changed.

mileslane7h agoMost Upvoted

Man that bamboo is no joke. I planted a small strip of it along my fence line three years ago thinking it would be a nice privacy screen. Now it's popping up in my neighbor's yard and I'm out there every weekend with a shovel trying to dig up runners that have spread like twenty feet. The worst part is I left for a week long vacation and came back to new shoots that were literally taller than my car.

fiona_carr265h ago

Actually the Moso bamboo (Phyllostachys edulis) doesn't grow that fast in the typical home garden... it's more of a timber bamboo that needs very specific conditions in warmer climates like southern China. The common running bamboo most of us deal with, like Golden bamboo, tops out around 2-3 inches a day on a good day. Still obnoxious, but not 35 inches obnoxious. I dug up one of my runners last spring and it had gone 15 feet sideways under my patio, so I get the frustration though.