How to Save Bamboo After It Blooms

Hi! This is Yolanda Vanveen on behalf of Expert Village. In this series, we're talking all about bamboo. How to grow it, how to display it, how to dig it up, what to do with it. In this segment, we're going to talk about what to do when your bamboo blooms. Bamboo does actually bloom, and sometimes it's only every 20-80 years. What happens when it blooms is it dies off, and you'll have no bamboo afterwards. It'll kill the whole plant. There's been studies that have been done. You can take a seed off of a bamboo plant halfway around the world and plant it in your garden, and it'll come up and it'll grow beautifully. In 30-40 years later, it'll bloom and die. The same seeds that are grown halfway around the world will do the same thing at the same time. Genetically, it's in the seed. They will have a bloom time eventually. I've read lots of methods on how to save your plants when they do bloom and if they ever bloom, because it doesn't happen very often. The easiest trick that I found is as soon as you see blooms on your bamboo and it's turned into a seedpod, cut the seed pod off, throw it in a hole and cut it into 4 sections and plant it. Many times that will stop the mother plant from dying because it hasn't completely gone to seed and the seed's off the plant. Many times that seed will actually grow as well. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. Apparently, a lot of people have been able to save their bamboo after it blooms by using this method. Next, we'll talk about how to take of your bamboo in the winter.