The endless battle...

[forgeblast]

If its the japanese knot weed aka bamboo that is all around the sides of the road this is how i do it.
1. spring at first emergenc hit it wil roundup product
2. after it flowers (you dont want to hit the bees) spray it again (august/sept)
3. continue for 3 years and it will be mostly dead.
****it does not spread by seed, only rhizomes***
I have been fighing this for for years and thats what i do.

 

[pat32rf]

We have knotweed here. The first year I dug out the roots with the hoe, then Roundup. The next year I dug out more roots and every 3-4 days cut off any sprouts, getting as much root as I could. Next year I will continue to cut off any sprouts that show but in other places two years of CONSTANT removal has done it.....

 

[forgeblast]

I had it all done, then the road crew recrowned the road. When they did they moved rhyzomes from above us to where i had it cleaned out. So im back to fighting it.

 

[Gary Fowler]

There are basically two types of bamboo, spreading and clumping. You must have the spreading kind and you will only get rid of it by digging up the rizomes. That is how it spreads. You can't chop it up with a tiller and get rid of it, that would just spread the roots. If you dig out all the roots that you can find it will thin it out, but you wont find them all and some will inevitible come back.You could spray it with tree killer like 2-4-D (dont know if you can buy that without a special license) you can get rid of it.
If you can lay your hands on some of it, you have to be extremely carefull as it will kill all trees and it only takes a few drops to damage or kill anything it gets on. I would check with a local horticulturist to see if he would spray it for you. Spreading bamboo and switch cane is hard to kill. In the south we also have Johnson's grass that was imported from Africa that spreads the same way and is hard to kill. IT takes many years of spraying to get rid of it. The commonly available without an applicator's license glyphosphate is mostly for grass and weeds and is so diluted as to be practically worthless except for yard grasses. Again, it might be worth your time to hire a professional to spray it with industrial strength material designed for the bamboo especially if you have a large patch of it.

 

[stub]

Be careful with herbicides.

A long time ago, my uncle gave me some "brush killer" in a mason jar. I put it on the shelf in garage and forgot about it for years. One day I wanted to kill a stump and I remembered that stuff. I drilled a couple holes in the stump and poured a little of it in. I had a tiny cut on my finger and managed to get a drop on it.

Instantly, I had a nasty metallic taste in my mouth, started spitting, eyes watering, snot running. Then something grabbed me around the chest in a bear hug and I had to work for every breath. It didn't go away and I had to go to Emergency Room and spent a night in the hospital, afraid to go to sleep for fear of quitting breathing. Not a good feeling.

No damage, other than a permanent fear when I walk down the roundup isle. It took a long time before I would even touch Roundup again. Now when I mix it, I use heavy rubber gloves, paper towels, etc.

 

[Soundguy]

so.. what was in the jar? 2,4,d ? glyphosate? or something totally different like dioxin contaminates?

soundguy

 

[stub]

I never did find out. Doc said the symtoms were typical of glyco-phosphate poisoning.

 

[Soundguy]

better than dioxin I guess.

soundguy

 

[pat32rf]

I had neighbour across the lake who worked for hydro. Wanted to spray the weeds and shrubs on the path leading down to the lake so he "got" something from work. We watched from our dock as he sprayed, wearing a mask, rubber boots & gloves, T shirt and shorts......
Judging from the noise that ALL his two stroke engines (ATV, trail bike and sled) produce the chemical must have rendered him deaf (and maybe dumb)

 

[JEH412]

Is there any way to get rid of well-established out of control bamboo?

There isn't an easy way! Wife and I spent a lot of time this spring and summer cleaning out a small grove of Phyllostachys yellow groove bamboo (many species within the Phyllostachys family; all running bamboos and the most common in the U.S.) and the only way is to cut it down and dig out everything you can lay your hands on.

If you don't intend to use the area for anything else for quite a few years, you can cut it down, spray it with the strongest stuff you can find and knock off every new shoot that emerges. Then you spray again... If you just cut it, the slightly exposed crowns at each culm will make it real hard to walk through the area and there ain't no plowing it. Well, maybe a subsoiler and a powerful tractor, but then you hope you don't puncture the sidewall of a tire. If you want to use the area, digging it out is the only way to go.

A backhoe would make pretty quick work of it. Unfortunately, I don't own a backhoe. After we cut everything I used a digging iron to work partway under each crown then hooked a chain attached to the 3-point and yanked them up far enough to cut the rhizomes. We tried to work mostly when the ground was wet and that let us pull a lot of rhizomes out by hand. We really worked the area over, turning as much soil as we could with forks to we wouldn't miss too many rhizomes. The only area where we know we missed some was where they had run under tree roots and were too tangled to dig without risking tree damage. Those I keep an eye on and break off new shoots as I see them. Eventually the rhizome will run out of nutrients and stop sending up shoots.

We dug out a grove about 10-15 feet wide by 25-30 long and had more than
600 pounds of rhizomes, after the dirt was knocked off and they sat in the rain for about a month. I ran ads on Craigslist and quickly got rid of all the culms. Could easily have gotten rid of three or four times the amount!

Good luck in your efforts to get rid of it!

John