I do not need to describe how great bamboo is, as most know its many practical uses. Here in the countryside practically all fences, barricades, and small houses are all made from bamboo.
Young bamboo shoots are eaten, and there is also a type of edible mushroom that grows near bamboo.
On the corner of the farm is a giant bamboo thicket. It is at least 20 meters (65 feet) high, maybe even more.
This is so thick that at every height and ever side it is impossible to penetrate. It has not been touched or harvested for at least 2 years. It is totally wild, unkept, and unmanaged (up until now). Just to give an example of how wild this bamboo was.. the neighbour’s rooster accidentally flew into the bamboo thinking it could sit on the branches, it then got spiked and trapped. It died and slowly decomposed over the next month.
When I first came on the farm I was very impressed with the tall bamboo, back then about one year a go it was already unkept and wild. In the middle of the thicket there were some stumps that were burned and cut. The usual way of harvesting bamboo here is by burning the thicket and then cutting the canes with a machete, axe, or chainsaw. The burning does not kill the bamboo, but it does weaken it; it also burns off the bamboo leaf mulch and organic matter and damages the soil.
Coming from Europe I do not know anything about bamboo, I did not even know it had super sharp spikes or that the wood is actually a lot harder than it seems.
I did not touch the bamboo for over a year and I suspect it has barely been touched for a year before that.
Having little knowledge of bamboo I did not want to harvest it in fear of killing the bamboo; and its sheer grand size was so impressive that in a way it felt disrespectful to cut it.
This bamboo thicket is also the on farthest part of the farm so I do not come there often to inspect it, thus it is easy to neglect.
As the dry season started I knew it would we a good time to harvest some of the bamboo. It had already grown a lot in the rainy season, so I thought it was about time to do something with it.
We also needed some fencing material to keep our new doberman dog out of my wife’s garden (The dog has been eating the flowers and stepping on them) and to build a shade house.
Me and my wife confidently went out to the bamboo with our machetes thinking we can cut a few canes. We quickly realized it might take us several week of chopping and hacking at the bamboo to get even near the center where the main canes are. After a few minutes of chopping my wife got a bamboo spike into her finger that went fairly deep, she has not been able to move her finger for a few days now and can not put any pressure with her hand.
We came back from the bamboo defeated with only a few small bamboo sticks. Altho it is the easiest way, I do not want to burn the bamboo as I do not like causing damage to the soil.
Once we are able to tackle the bamboo and keep it under control then we can manage and harvest it regularly. The bamboo is located on top of a steep slope. The ridge extends further for about 30 to 50 meters and is full of shrubs. The slope goes down to a flat area and then meets the river. The flat area used to be the old mung bean and rice field. After the flat area got flooded by the river and all mung beans washed away the field has been abandoned; not it is full of weeds and wild trees. Not much can be planted on the slope, perhaps bananas and the flat area that regularly becomes flooded from the river overflowing can also not be used for growing crops.
It seems that the only reasonable thing to grow there is just more bamboo, as bamboo is both resistant to strong water currents and can help in stabilizing slopes. So when the rainy season comes I plan on planting the whole area full of bamboo to create a small bamboo forest or grove. I will try to clone the bamboo either trough stem or root cuttings and see how it goes.
I will update this post further as I progress.
Thank you for reading.
If someone has advice on managing and maintaining bamboo I would be glad to hear it.
Jungle Fun 