In order to get your new plants off to a good start we’d like to offer the following care suggestions.

Receiving your delivery

     Always unpack/unload your new bamboo plants in the shade and water them as soon as you get them unpacked. Soak the root ball thoroughly and give the foliage a spray as well. They really enjoy being sprayed with a fine mist of water!  If you have already prepared the planting site and are committed to providing some TLC for the first few weeks, the bamboo will need to be "hardened off" meaning it will need to be slowly introduced to sunlight. This is usually done by placing them in a shaded area where they will recieve plenty of indirect sunlight for approximately 1 week.

Initial Care

    You have purchased a healthy & viable bamboo plant and the best way to ensure that the bamboo gets off to a good start is to make sure that the plant receives adequate watering. We suggest that you lightly water your new bamboo every day for the first week and every other day for the second week. After the initial couple of weeks, you should care for bamboo as you would any other landscape ornamental by watering deeply at least once a week. Bamboo appreciates a thorough, deep soaking more than a drip style watering but it also needs to dry out somewhat between waterings, so be careful not to over water.
     As an additional step to help your new bamboo plant to become established, we suggest that you monitor the condition of the bamboo leaves and be prepared to offer temporary shade if needed. When exposed to full sunlight it is normal for your bamboo to curl its leaves up tightly to minimize the amount of surface area that is exposed to the sun, thus conserving moisture. However, if the leaves remain curled even when the hot sun is not bearing down on them, this is the bamboo’s way of communicating that they are stressed and in need of a thorough watering and possibly some temporary shade. If you really want to ease your bamboo into its new environment, you might consider protecting it from the hot afternoon sun by temporarily placing a shade tent over the plant, although this step is usually only necessary in extremely hot weather.
    In the unlikely event that your bamboo curls its leaves even in shade and when adequately watered, it may be necessary to reduce the height of the culm and to remove some of the branches to re-establish the proper rhizome to foliage ratio. 

Planting your Bamboo in containers

 When transplanting your seedling to a larger container it is recommended that it be planted into just a slightly larger pot each time you transplant, this will help maintain a healthy rhizome/root system.

 The container your plant is in should be nearly completely filled with roots prior to transplanting into a larger container. For the soil used I recommend Premiere Pro Mix, it can be found in large bales at Home Depot, and I add an organic fertilizer such as "Epsoma" brand organic fertilizer prior to using the soil. For the most any commercial potting soil which contains vermiculite or perlite, is light and airy and contains some organic material is suitable.

  After transplanting, your plant should be well watered in to the point of sturation in order to fill any air pockets left in the soil, this will ensure proper contact between the roots and the soil, reduce the possibility of transplant shock and aide in maintaining a healthy root environment for your bamboo.

 For continued care water as you would normally.

 Planting Your Bamboo Outdoors

     This bamboo is only a seedling and has been grown indoors it's entire life, as with any indoor grown plant, they must be hardened  off prior to receiving direct sunlight. Harding off requires that the plant be slowly introduced to sunlight by placing it in shaded area for a period of 1-2 weeks, during this time each few days the plant is moved to a location where it will recieve a greater amount of sunlight. Simply placing the plant in a window sill for a couple of weeks can work just as well. Once your plant has been hardened off, this variety in particular grows  best in full sun to partial shade.

Site Selection – Bamboo loves to be watered but it does not want to live in water! Seasonally wet planting sites should be fine, but bamboo will not prosper in a site that is usually wet or in heavy clay soils that hold water for long periods of time. In general, most bamboos appreciate a soil that has a mix of clay and enough organic material to keep the soil light & loamy.
     In a broad sense - broad because full sun in Seattle is not the same as full sun in Phoenix - most timber bamboos prefer full sun while the shrub & dwarf varieties prefer shadier sites. With few exceptions, bamboos with variegated leaves need to be planted where they will not receive direct sunlight. Having said this, bamboo is a remarkably resilient plant and you can plant the timber varieties in shady sites and you can plant the shrubs & dwarfs in sunny locations. If at all possible, it is ideal to select planting sites that do not receive full winter sun and are not exposed to winter winds. 

     Another consideration in making the appropriate site selection is the expected shooting season of the variety of bamboo that you have selected. Bamboo needs a full 3 months from the time that the new shoots appear until the first frost is expected in order for the new culms to harden off and to ensure adequate root development. Therefore, varieties that are known to be late season shooters should be planted in locations that will warm up earliest in the spring – usually south facing sites. Conversely, varieties of bamboo that are early season shooters should be planted in sites that are slower to warm up in order to push back their shooting period in order to avoid late season frosts, which can damage or kill new shoots. \

     Time to plant! – You may plant your new bamboo in a variety of ways such as a hole, a trench, a raised bed, or a container. Bamboo is more forgiving than most plants in terms of how deeply it is planted compared to how deep it had previously been growing, but in general plant it as you would plant a tree. Dig a hole the same depth as the root ball and twice as wide. We suggest backfilling the hole with a nice potting soil mix or other organic loamy soil in order to provide a nice environment for new roots to grow. Do not add fertilizer to the planting hole and be very careful using any manure other than well-rotted manure. We strongly advise against using the cheap-bagged top soil sold at most garden centers. It does not drain well and ‘sets up’ like concrete. Be sure that you use something with vermiculite or another material that loosens the soil. It is not necessary to amend the soil outside of the planting area unless it is unusually heavy or hardpan soil, in which case you may wish to consider a different planting site or a raised bed for your bamboo.
     Be sure to water the air pockets out of the planting hole prior to completely backfilling. Water thoroughly and mulch for added moisture retention. You can use a wide variety of materials for mulching but we have found that voles are attracted to leaf mulches and they will eat your bamboo rhizomes underground!

Routine Care

     Once your bamboo becomes well established it is a relatively low-maintenance plant in terms of its care requirements. By far the most important thing that you can do is to ensure an adequate year-round supply of water for you bamboo. Water is more important than supplemental fertilizers so be sure to provide plenty during the hot summer days. The ideal feeding cycle is once about a month before the onset of shooting season, and again at the end of the shooting period, which is just prior to the beginning of the active rhizome growth cycle. New plantings should be fertilized using a diluted water soluble food. in a timely routine manner. Something like N:10  P:6  K:5 which also contains minor trace elements, is preferred. Feed a small amount often rather than a lot at once. We use and recommend Dyna-Gro Foliage Pro 9-3-6 and supplemented with Pro-Tekt silicon solution which supplies higher levels of potassium and silicon which helps plants build stronger cell walls resulting in increased stem strength and leaf positioning on plants which improves photosythesis and increases resistance to heat, drought and cold tolerance.

Bamboo responds well to lawn food. It particularly likes chicken manure and a few trace elements from time to time.. Do not feed your bamboo any fertilizer containing nitrogen after the beginning of August! The addition of nitrogen late in the fall increases the likelihood of damage from cold weather. Some growers claim that a fall feeding of a fertilizer high in phosphorous & potassium (no nitrogen!) will improve winter hardiness but we have no firsthand experience with this technique.