Growing Edible Bamboo Shoots

Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen and in this segment we're going to talk about how to grow edible bamboo shoots. Now bamboo shoots are very popular in China and Japan and all of Southeast Asia and they're use in many dishes. Most often you can buy the shoots can and then just put them right into your stir fry or other dishes and they're very delicious and really easy to use in cooking. But they're actually easy to grow in your garden as well. So there's many types of bamboos that are use for bamboo shoots and in China they use mostly the Phyllostachys varieties and those are running bamboo. The bets bamboo is the bamboo shoots that are under the ground that have just started to form. So the early spring even through summer, as long as they're cut and pulled up before they reach the sun, then they are the best to use. So fresh bamboo is a staple in much, much of Asia and it's use in many many different ways. And in China they use mostly the Phyllostachys which includes the black bamboo. But from all reports, the black bamboo is not the best to eat. It's the other varieties that taste better; the Aurea, the Vivax, the Nuda, the Dulcis and the Indoscens are all the best varieties to use. And you always want to boil your bamboo shoots before you use them because some varieties actually have a little bit of cinogen or cyanogen or cyanide in it; so if you eat a lot of it that's not cook, it can actually be fatal. But that usually doesn't happen. The Phyllostachys Pubescens is also known as the most sought-type of bamboo and is use mostly in Japan. But it does have a lot of the cyanogen in it; so you want to make sure and always boil it really well before you use it. When you're growing any type of bamboo that's edible, especially the running varieties, you never want to plant it right in the ground because it'll just take over and run into the neighbor's yard. So you always want to make it in containers or make barriers for it so that it doesn't take over and then that way you can enjoy your edible bamboo for many years to come.