Neighbours Bamboo plants threatening to encroach

Property & Home
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Not more cement !!! Lol. Great suggestion, thanks

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Cement beats having to hire a digger again and sift the soil to remove all the roots.
Bamboo is a lovely plant in the right place and when well contained


1 Like
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A propos of bamboo, I came across this and hope it may be of help to you

I’m afraid that digging may be required :confused:

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Hello Bill
I bought a house in Charente-Maritime, with litterally a small forest of Bamboo in the garden. 1st year we chopped them down returned a few months later and the forest had doubled in size. We tried everything but found an article from the states and the only thing that killed them was about a kilo or more of salt on the low cut stalk or rhizome. It has worked! Scared the life out of me when a bamboo came up 20ft from the house when I d seen photos of them coming through wooden floor boards. Anyway we seem to have got our garden back and will gradually dig up the protruding roots. I bought 10 kilo bags of pickling salt from le Clerc and agricultural salt.
By law bamboo must not invade a neighbours land.
Yes I know salt us not good for wildlife, but the grass is still growing and its better than roundup or other strong pesticides that wouldn’t work.
Best of luck
Tricia

25

Tricia

Thank you very much indeed for that very helpful suggestion. And congratulations on finding a solution to your infestation. It’s terrible stuff and to think a few miles from us there’s a garden you can pay to visit that consists of a collection of varieties of bamboo. A friend from New Zealand suggested sump oil in large quantities and then set fire to. Not sure that would go down too well around us. How great to have a house in the Charente Maritime. Our first family visit to France was in that area and we have fond memories. `i hope you enjoy your house and thanks again for the suggestion
Best
Bill

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Hello Bill

Thanks so much for your lovely response. Yes Charente Maritime is a beautiful place to spend time in, especially now I have a garden rather than a bamboo forest!
Salt was the only solution as there was so much of it to tackle, by starting on the perimeter we cut and salted so it stopped the expansion. Whatever you do don’t just cut it and leave it as it encourages to rhizomes to spread.

Wishing you a wonderful summer.

Tricia

28

What we’ve found with bamboo is that we need to dig a narrow but deep trench at the border of where the bamboo should be (e.g. at the fence) and put a sheet of something robust vertically down it so that the roots stop there. Then we can work backwards and dig out the bamboo. Takes ages of course but provided you don’t have acres of it, it does work and won’t re-emerge across the boundary.