Bamboo Nursery
Jmbamboo News
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Jmbamboo News
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01/31/08
We have some great deals on large, balled and burlaped Arrow bamboo, along
with others.
We will deliver free within 50 miles of Birmingham, Al. Call me at 205 283
5638 to order.
Below are 12 large bamboo plants we delivered to Birmingham recently.
These large Arrow Bamboo field specimens were delivered to an address in Birmingham today. These will be planted about every 3 to 4 feet along a concreted lined drainage ditch. You can see the building they want to hide. This should be a dense screen within a couple of years. |
The plants averaged about 10 feet tall, some almost 12, one or two were 8 feet tall. All had a large number of canes with 15 inch rootballs. We spaced them out along the back fence and she will have them planted over the next couple of days. We expect rain tonight so they are in good shape. You can feel the humidity in the air. |  |
This was the smallest
plant, about 8 feet tall (we included it free). This was placed in an area
that will provide privacy to the deck you can see in the upper background.
01/30/08 I have been digging for the past couple of weeks and had a few hundred plants in temporary holding areas. My daughter-in-law and I spent the last few days potting all these up and moving everything to the holding area where I keep most shipping sized plants. The bamboos we potted up included Giant Gray Henon, Green Onion, Arrow, Giant Leaf, Beautiful, Palmata, Japanese Timber, and Yellow Groove. I 've made sure to dig lots of #3 and #5 size plants along with the many #2 size. I need to divide up a bunch of carnivorus plants I'm trying propagate. These can be seen at my othe web site Big Plants. |
01/13/08
The pond is finally full. We've had enough rain to send it over the spilway but just barely. It looks nice. I see a glimmer of gold from the fish and wonder just how many baby fish there will be this spring (see below). I have to get a few large bass. I've been digging (that goes on most all winter) and cutting out some dead canes to clean up the groves. WIth cold weather we've started some indoor projects. |
12/25/07 For all pracitcal purposes this year is over! We still have a few more days until the actual new year begins but I'm pretty much taking it easy for the rest of this week, resting up from the holidays. Today has been great, lots of time with my family enjoying being together. I do plan digging more bamboo over the next few days but that never seems to stop! My son and I plan on visiting a nearby grove of Yellow Groove and hope to dig a truck load. We've got quite a bit of this species but it is one of our customer's favorites so we always want to have lots available. Thursday and Friday we plan to dig Arrow bamboo and Golden bamboo. These two along with the Yellow Groove and Red Margin are the top four most popular bamboos we sell. Next week will be busy again potting up all the newly dug bamboo. Potting up is much more time consuming than digging. We have to wash the soil from the roots, pot up the plants, and transport them to the holding area. Not my favorite activity, especially in cold weather. Luckily we do have a greenhouse that we use for potting when the weather is at it's worst. I hope you all had a wonderful holiday and wish you a happy new year. |
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11/17/07
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11/14/07 Although the three point hitch is a remarkable invention it does have it's limitations. Changing out my mower for my box blade is a difficult job involving pry bars, large hammers, and a lot of sweat. No more. I recently purchased and installed a "Quick Hitch". This device attaches to my three point hitch and allows me to back up to whatever piece of equipment I need to mount on the tractor and simply hook on by raising the hitch once the hooks are in place. It is a fairly simple device (not much to go wrong) and works as advertised. |
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11/13/07 This is a cane of Pigskin bamboo that I hit with the bucket on my tractor while loading the dump trailer with dirt. It was a very tight area. On the right is a small Black Snake I found this evening in our house. It was about 18 inches long and just beautiful with extremely shiny, black scales and bright yellow on the belly. Several year ago we had a couple of Milk snakes that would come in and lay on the plastic of our florescent light fixture. They were right up close to the bulbs and very warm. This happened several years in a row and they usually stayed for a few weeks. We usually saw them several times during this period and found some great skins they has shed. They were at least 4 feet long. I haven't seen them in several years so I was happy to see this little guy. I let him go back behind the washer hoping he would grow big enought to eat mice. |
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11/12/07 Below is our poor pond. The southeast is undergoing a severe drought. The pond is down about 4 feet. It never goes any lower than that . I believe this is the water table as there is a nearby well with a high water level. No water is visible comeing into the pond, the small small creek that feeds it has been dry all summer. For years my pond would get a little low in the fall and fill back up by the end of September. This year it was at about this level by August. No rain is forecast any time soon. On the right is a picture of some goldfish in the pond. I had cleaned out all the silt last year and stocket the pond with 200 catfish fingerlings. During the winter I got 7 goldfish from my sister's well stocked ponds. They were 6 to 8 inches long. I feed the fish daily and there are at least 200 goldfish, most about 4 inches long. I can only assume the fish I placed in the pond had fry (baby fish) and most of them survived as there were no predators in the pond. We had completely drained it last year so there was not much more than frogs and tadpoles this year. The catfish are scavengers and were well fed so they were not eating baby goldfish. The picture is only a small sample of a much larger school of these fish. It's downright spooky. |
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11/02/07 I gave up on the dump truck and front end loader. Seems we could never arrange a mutually agreeable date and time. That would have been the fastest method to move a lot of dirt but in the end I ended up using a dump trailer and my tractor. Working non-stop for 2 days I moved about 150 yards of earth. The dirt was used to level an area in order to extend my plant holding area allowing me to consolidate most of my stock into one area. Another day has been spend leveling and smoothing dirtbut more work is needed. I intend to continue to grow my business so I need more room. Once I finish smoothing the area cover with gravel and a fabric groundcover. This beautiful fall weather has made working outside a very enjoyable experience. |
10/18/07 After
the busiest year ever I've finally got a chance to make some changes
at the nursery. A continuing problem has been enough space to store
plants. I expanded the holding area last year but I can see I need
even more room. Today I spent culling old plants, weeding plants,
cleaning up around the holding area, and moving all plants to one
small holding area (temporarily). I had scheduled a truck and front
end loader for tomorrow but it looks like we may finally get some
rain. If so, I'll have to call and cancel in the morning. I hope to
actually double the plant holding area. I've got lots dirt available.
( we drained and cleaned out our pond last year and still have lots
of sandy silt from that). I cut a few trees, pulled up most of the
ground cover fabric and mowed all the weeds. My current holding area
has 4 different levels. I intend to bring in enought dirt to build
these all up to the same level while while expanding the area. Another
area will also be leveled and expanded. These changes should give
me a bamboo holding area that won't need expanding for a while. As
soon as we get the heavy equipment on site I'll have some pictures.
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10/12/07 We've spent most of the summer re-modeling our kitchen so I've gotten behind on nursery chores. We finally had a nice rain yesterday so I used the opportunity to dig bamboo for the upcoming season. With help from my son we dug 80 Robert Young plants and 75 Incense Bamboo. We have several groves of each, both here at the nursery as well as at both my sister's and brother's places. Today I potted up all these plants. With all we dug plus a few Dwarf David Bisset we transplanted over 200 plants into containers. I'm really tired of potting bamboo but felt like we've got a good start and have made up a little for lost time. Over the next few weeks we should be able to re-stock most of our inventory and be ready for the spring rush. I've started many new groves of some of the most popular bamboos over the past few years and it's really paying off now. I've also been potting up Moso seedlings that I started last winter. These are only about 4 inches tall at this time but should be ready for sale in 2 to 3 years. |
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10/11/07 Left - This fence is approx. 5 years old. It doesn't really touch the ground at any point so it's holding up pretty well. It gets very green during humid periods and you can see the moss growing on both the stone and bamboo on the Right. |
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10/10/07 On the far left is an example of Black Bamboo turning color. The new canes emerged in the spring with a bright green color. They stay green most of the summer and are just now starting to turn black. They often have really nice look with the black color being very dark at the base with just a sprinkling of color on up the cane. It will take almost a year for all the canes to completely change. The speed with which the color changes depends on the amount of sunlight the canes receive, the variety of P.nigra, and other factors. On the immediate left is a new cane of P. dulcis, Sweetshoot Bamboo. This species is supposed to have the best tasting shoots of any of the bamboos. These canes get fairly large, up to 3 plus inches in diameter and have a curving, sinuous look. The new shoots of this species are especially pretty. On the right is a new cane of P.v.Robert Young bamboo. These canes also emerge green but begin fading to yellow right away. You can see how light the yellow color looks compared to the older canes in the background. Robert Young is an impressive bamboo with stunning color and big canes. The green stripes are a nice look also. |
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10/08/07 For the past few weeks it's been too dry to dig bamboo in most areas and I've been busy with some other chores around the nursery. I cleaned out dead canes in several groves and mowed around the greenhouse and nursery yard. I also used the tractor around a grove of S. okuboi. This mediulm sized bamboo makes a great screen and spreads rapidly. Mowing works fairly well but only because I have a large open area all around the groove. My bogs full of carnivorous plants were in a bad need of weeding and proper identification. I examined most all plants and grouped them according to species and varieties. Here are some examples of particularly beautiful pitchers.These two are the same species, S. leucophylla. On the left is the common species. and on the right is a red form of the same plant. The pitcher is a modified leaf, not a flower. They do bloom in the spring. There were once large fields of these all over the southeast but are very hard to find today. A bog covered in pitcher plants is an extraordinary sight. |
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9/27/07 Sarracenia catesbei. I grow a wide variety of insect eating plants. You can see more pictures here. These plants require a lot of sun. I live in a valley with lots of large trees so full sun sites are in demand. Most open areas have been planted with bamboo already. This past winter I opened up a large, flat area on the far side of my property. It is a small glearing thati's bordered by a neighbor's overgrown pasture, giving it full sun most of the day. I moved most of my carnivorus plants there. Currently there are two, 4 by 16 foot bogs holding several hundred plants including Picture Plants, Sundews, Butterwarts, and Venus Flytraps. There are also orchids and a few other flowering plants that thrive in the same unique conditions that these carnivorous plants need. |
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9/26/07 This is the new planting of Green Stripe Vivax (P.v. aureocaulis) If you look closely you can see 3 or 4 specimen sized plants. They all have small, new growth around the base. Thre are more plantings spread throughtout the clearing. A small creek makes a half loop around this area. There's still a lot in an area where I don't want it so maybe I can get several more plantings before spring. Once we have a frost it will be easier to tell where the best planting sites are. |
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09/24/07 I recently delivered a load of Arrow Bamboo to a landscaper in Alexander City. On the way back to Birmingham I passed near this playground. My brother, brother-in-law, and myself once founded a company that manufactured commercial playgrounds. This is the first one we sold. It wasn't red when we installed it about 15 years ago. We build several more playgrounds but eventually ended the venture. We built thee playgrounds to last and it seems to have held up well. This one has a climbing arch, a hanging bridge, monkey bars and chin up bars, platforms, and a slide, along with a swing. |
September
9, 2007
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This grove of Green Stripe Vivax was planted next to my plant storage area some time back and I had every intention of moving it within a few months. Eight years later the grove is getting quite large even though I've dug many plants from it and have root pruned it regularly trying to keep it under control. I need to expand my storage area so I'm trying to move it now or at least reduce the size by half. This bamboo is really beautiful with large yellow canes that have numerous green stripes. |
| I had this attachment made for the tractor to help with digging bamboo. It has a large arm tha twas once half of a fork lift. It replaces the bucket on my front end loader so it has lots of movement allowing me to slide right under the rhizomes and rootball. We can dig really large specimens with very little physical labor. I've found that it is a great tool for rhizome pruning as it lifts the rhizomes where than can be cut without distrubing the ground too much. |  |
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These were big, tough rhizomes in very rocky soil. I moved about half the grove to a very nice planting site about 500 yards away. The area faces south and is in the bend of a creek. It's mostly a big sandy bank of sediment from the creek. There was a giant oak here that fell during a strorm, the trunk was hollow and splintered. This left a large opening in the woods and this is where I intend to trnasfer the bamboo grove. I'll have more pictures later. |
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These
are all White Top pitcher plants, S.leucophylla. This species puts up
a new crop of pitchers in the fall and this is the result. These are
nice tall plants, some close to 3 feet tall. 