Building a planter box for running bamboo

[artie]

After almost three years of cultivating various running bamboo in my own yard in northeast Texas, I am now moving to a new location in urban Dallas. Of course, I would like to take all of my bamboo with me, but my new (temporary) location has a tiny yard, and the landlord does not want bamboo in the ground. However, I do have permission to build two planter boxes around the perimeter of the sunny patio, each about ten feet long by about 30" wide. I'm looking for design tips on materials to use, how deep to make it, amount and size/spacing of drainage holes, type of soil/potting mix, and any tips on ways to make the planter box "friendly" to rhizome pruning and other maintenance.

I have several pots of phyllostachys nigra, makinoi, aurea and bisetti, as well as some semiarundenaria fastuosa viridis, all ready for a new home. Any suggestions will be welcomed! Thank you.

Artie Turner

[needmore]

Artie, I'll put in 2 cents, I built 2 timber beds each 4'x16'. I mixed my own soil using bark mulch, leaves, manure, bagged topsoil, a little pea gravel, a little sand etc. This week I tore them out after 7 years as they never did what I wanted and I'm now putting a pond in that area so I had to pull out all the rhizomes. These had Bory & Vivax BTW. The soil was great for rhizome and root development and man you should have seen the piles of rhizome I yanked out. But this mix was way too loamy and as a new culm got up to over 6 feet or so and started leafing out it started to flop over - all the way over, so much that I had to prune them each year into a 4' hedge or it looked like crap. Lesson learned here was be sure to add plenty of clay to help hold the culms vertical.

If you intend to leave them behind when you move out then probably treated lumber is the thing but if you'll take them with I'd suggest cedar - well more costly but much prettier. I have been exclusively using cedar when affordable or the AC2 treated lumber for larger projects, it looks more natural than the 'green' looking treated lumber.

I would consider sloping the sides outward at a slight angle to help deflect rhizomes up; I think I'd put is as many drainage holes as possible - small enough that rhizome can not escape, maybe 1/2"? Also would line the thing with rhizome barrier and put a good few inches of stone on the bottom for drainage - waterlogged soil would be bad so really pay attention to that aspect. With proper drainage, in Dallas you'll have to water like mad once they start to fill up the box so locating them out of the Dallas afternoon sun might be a good idea, if possible. If you were worried about cold winter lows you could put some styrofoam board in between the rhizome barrier and the lumber. Oh, and if there are cats around (or I personally like the look) I'd top the whole thing with attractive stone - river stone etc., new shoots will easily push up through the stone.

[artie]

Brad,

That was more like a quarter than 2 cents worth. Thank you! Everything you describe makes perfect sense to me, except for the part about

Also would line the thing with rhizome barrier and put a good few inches of stone on the bottom for drainage - waterlogged soil would be bad so really pay attention to that aspect.

If it were lined with rhizome barrier, wouldn't that make it a bathtub for all practical purposes? Or are you suggesting holes in the barrier too?

Does anyone have a test to measure the density of the soil so as to avoid the falling problem? Seems like you could do something like take a piece of 1" diameter bamboo, drive it one foot in the ground, and then use a fish scale to measure how many pounds it takes to pull it over.

If anyone else has a recipe for planter box growing medium I'd sure like to hear about it.

Thanks again.

Artie

[needmore]

Brad,

That was more like a quarter than 2 cents worth. Thank you! Everything you describe makes perfect sense to me, except for the part about

Also would line the thing with rhizome barrier and put a good few inches of stone on the bottom for drainage - waterlogged soil would be bad so really pay attention to that aspect.

If it were lined with rhizome barrier, wouldn't that make it a bathtub for all practical purposes? Or are you suggesting holes in the barrier too?

Does anyone have a test to measure the density of the soil so as to avoid the falling problem? Seems like you could do something like take a piece of 1" diameter bamboo, drive it one foot in the ground, and then use a fish scale to measure how many pounds it takes to pull it over.

If anyone else has a recipe for planter box growing medium I'd sure like to hear about it.

Thanks again.

Artie

Yes, but a bathtub with no bottom so it should not impede drainage and could help to deflect rhizomes upward if you angle it properly, thus discouraging them from looking for drainage holes to escape from.

[boolover]

I built 2 timber beds each 4'x16'.

[boolover]

Brad,

How deep did you make the box?

[needmore]

Perhaps a foot deep - pretty shallow for cold winters but to my amazement I have Atrovaginata with culms at 30' in a bed built on concrete and at this point it has 8, 10 inches of soil at most. I can't believe they remain vertical and I'll be adding more soil once the shoots finish leafing out. I see you are in FL and I'd guess that large clumping bamboos would not remain so vertical in such a shallow bed.

[mantis]

We went to the Lotus & Bamboo Festival last weekend, and they had built a bunch of boxes for their runners. They were all different lengths and widths, but were the same depths... I attached a picture showing one of their small beds.

[Mark_NoVA]

That's a nice looking planter!
Something I have wondered about before is something with holes/gaps on the sides, so that the rhizomes would grow out the sides (where you could easily trim them) instead of curling around and getting root-bound or going deep. Possibilities would be 8x8x16 cinder blocks, or strong wire fencing with enough stakes to support it. Has anybody ever tried such an idea?

[needmore]

That's a nice looking planter!
Something I have wondered about before is something with holes/gaps on the sides, so that the rhizomes would grow out the sides (where you could easily trim them) instead of curling around and getting root-bound or going deep. Possibilities would be 8x8x16 cinder blocks, or strong wire fencing with enough stakes to support it. Has anybody ever tried such an idea?

Mine I tore out we also landscaper timber beds and plenty of rhizomes found a way out of those, plenty more were deflected. I usually use dry stack native stone walls and they come out of those easily as there are numerous gaps.

[Alan_L]

...something with holes/gaps on the sides, so that the rhizomes would grow out the sides (where you could easily trim them) instead of curling around and getting root-bound or going deep. Possibilities would be 8x8x16 cinder blocks, or strong wire fencing with enough stakes to support it.

I think the main problem would be keeping it from drying out, depending on your climate. Also, keeping the soil from falling/washing out.

[kudzu9]

Thanks...I did find that one, too, but I swear I remember a thread where someone had photos of a planter he had built with a removable side, which was a great help in pulling out a root-bound bamboo for division. Maybe it could have been on GardenWeb, but I thought for sure it was here...

[gardenmonkey]

I have Atrovaginata with culms at 30' in a bed built on concrete and at this point it has 8, 10 inches of soil at most. I can't believe they remain vertical

That's amazing. I guess my recently potted bamboo's in whiskey barrel planters will be okay then.

[kudzu9]

gardenmonkey-
If they are running bamboo, they'll be good until the time you decide to transplant them. Then you will probably find that the rhizomes have moved to the edges of the barrels, have circled, and now occupy a space larger in diameter than the opening at the top. When you try to get the plant out, you will have a devil of a time. The last time I helped a neighbor get a bamboo out of a half whiskey barrel, we had to destroy the barrel in order to get the root ball out, even though we had divided the root ball with a root pruning saw before trying to extract it. Just a heads-up...

[gardenmonkey]

Thanks for the info. I will just have to think of these planters as disposable then. I plan on leaving the bamboo's in there for several years or more so I guess I just won't get too attatched to the whiskey barrells. Thanks!