The Holy Grail Homestead Plant & The Secrets to Grow It

when the settlers were first arriving in America and starting their inroads inland a squirrel could have run from the East Coast the shore of the East Coast all the way to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground and I thought wow yeah some primeval forest with giant trees all connected big Limbs and I could see that you know I was all wrong all right hey everybody welcome back to another Nature's always right video today I'm here with my friend Daryl luck in Baxter Tennessee to teach you guys all about bamboo so Daryl here is an expert in bamboo how long have you been growing bamboo I don't know how to consider myself an expert but I've done it compared to me I have a stack of books about that tall that are bamboo I've read them all but yeah I've been doing it about uh almost 20 years when I first I moved here 20 years ago and after about two years here I started adding bamboo plantings and in fact where we're standing right now this blocks the the road from being in view when I first moved here I could sit on the front porch and you'd see cars driving by people waving at you I didn't really like that too much so it's good for privacy there's my solution year-round Greenery I love it so yeah there's just so many things that you can use bamboo for and that's why I wanted to visit Daryl because I want to plant bamboo at my property for food from for building supplies to make biochar to make all sorts of different things and so yeah I'm very excited to be here with you so thank you for letting me come on over yeah it's great to have you here I want more people to know about bamboo absolutely so I guess tell us why did you what interested you about bamboo in the beginning why did you get started with it I I it's from my childhood really there was a river near me I had to walk about almost a mile from my house to get there but there was a bamboo Grove growing along the edge of the river and I I mean I was eight years old or whatever I'd go down there and just sit in that bamboo and even at that young age you'll feel it if you get into a nice Bamboo Grove it's a different feel there's an energy there and it's real different so you know uh I've always been interested in it and I have moved around a lot in different places in Tennessee looking for the perfect place which I now have found uh perfect for me um but at every farm that I left behind I also left a bamboo Grover too so we're going to go through Daryl's property show you a bunch of different varieties of bamboo going to go over which varieties that you might want to grow for your homestead and yeah just get some good advice about it and you know how to manage it too that's something I'm concerned about I don't want it to you know get out of control and you know things like that so that's the main thing that keeps people from growing bamboo but you know it's to me it's not that the bamboo is just so invasive that it's a scary thing it's that Americans haven't bothered to learn about bamboo and how it grows very differently from all the plants we're used to and I'll explain all that but you know it's it's just a lack of understanding and familiarity with the bamboo that keeps people scared of it in Japan a property that's for sale if it has a bamboo Grove on it it's worth a lot more than one without and so that's a bamboo culture you know for thousands of years they've lived with bamboo and used it in all kinds of ways and China's the same way and there's lots of places around the world that had a bamboo culture and and they still have that but we never really had that here I mean there is a native bamboo in America there's maybe three types of it but it gets maybe 15 feet tall and you can use it for one year as Garden stakes and all that and then it kind of falls apart it's not a real good quality wood and the shoots aren't that big for eating but this is what's so interesting to me because a lot of people I've heard people say well why would you plant bamboo in Tennessee it looks so out of place and I said out of place so the only reason it looks out of place is because we cut all the bamboo grows down and turned it into Farmland where we grow GMO soybeans now or whatever so okay I mean we got rid of it okay I mean I have some growing up in my Woods wild bamboo you know it's around it's along the Creeks here and stuff sometimes River cane they call it but they used to okay when I was a little kid I read that when the settlers were first arriving in America and starting their inroads inland a squirrel could have run from the East Coast all the way to the Mississippi River without ever touching the ground and I thought wow yeah some primeval forest with giant trees all connected big Limbs and I could see that you know I was all wrong that's not what America the eastern half of the United States only 50 percent of the land had that kind of a forest going on the other 50 percent were cane breaks okay huge areas especially along river bottoms and things where the cane had just taken over there's nothing else growing out there and huge okay and so when the settlers would come in well that's the prime Farmland the river bottom land and the river cane is pretty easy to get rid of instead of cutting down giant trees so they could turn it into a farm field pretty quick and when they first arrived they could just put their cows and pigs out there for the winter and they had plenty to eat and protection from the elements and all that so it worked out real good but the thing was they were wiping out the cane breaks as they progressed and the cane breaks is where a bird called the Carolina Parakeet lived and nested that's the only place it would make nests we wiped out so much of that habitat that that bird went extinct and it was you see pictures of look up Carolina Parakeet I mean it's probably the prettiest bird we had in America it looked like a a parrot multicolored parrot or something beautiful bird if you want to start some bamboo on your property first of all highly recommend you have some sizable property you know if you're in Suburbia and you'd like to block the view of your neighbor's yard and put bamboo along the fence you're creating a huge problem for yourself and for your neighbor because eventually it's going to spread over there and they might not like bamboo like you do maybe they want to have a garden there and you know now your roots are all going the rhizomes have spread over there so that's not a good idea now you can grow bamboo in containers if you really really want some bamboo a big pot some of them grow quite well in pots in fact these two smaller varieties would be excellent in pots so that's an option uh if you want it in the ground they do make a bamboo barrier out of a heavy duty plastic that limit because bamboo is a shallow rooted plant so you know the bamboo barrier goes down about 30 inches and it's very unlikely it's going to go underneath it might try to go over top but then you can see that easily and cut that rhizome so it doesn't spread so that's another method but this this is how a homestead can make maximum use of bamboo because the humans are going to use it the animals are going to use it you're going to you're going to find all kinds of uses for the canes and crafts and so forth so what I was saying is you go out in the middle of a pasture say and maybe you want to have a bamboo Grove that's a circle 30 feet across okay well you get your bamboo started and you can just put one plant in the center and in about five years it'll start filling that all up and be bigger and everything um and so you could put a fence around that so your livestock won't get at and damage them at all but now however tall your variety you've chosen is let's say you've got something that gets 40 feet tall well then from the edge of your Grove 40 feet out all the way around there's going to be rhizomes under that ground and in the spring they're going to send up shoots well that's your Zone to harvest shoots to eat or just allow the animals that are in that pasture to come and eat them if you want you know so that'll limit it the bamboo will never spread beyond that fence because it's being mowed or eaten or harvested for food so you know that that's the safest way and you don't have to worry about the bamboo getting out of hand or anything like that now if you have a flowing Creek that's a limiting barrier you could have the bamboo up against the creek and then mow around the other three sides or whatever yeah you could be up against the woods and you might get a few pop up at the edge of the woods but they're not going to do they like full sun if you're you want bamboo to really Thrive put its needs full sun okay and the shade will limit it might not you know die off but it's not going to really go crazy or anything so you know you got a few things you can use to limit that uh I would advise from my own experience just don't plant bamboo right alongside a County Road or something like that because what happens with me is in the winter and I have a it's quite a bit of bamboo right along the road in the winter you get a ice storm snowstorm something that weighs down the bamboo it bows down now if you can wait it out when it all melts the bamboo Springs right back up you know there might be one or two you have to cut that didn't spring up but uh it's a hassle for if it's laying across the county road and it's kind of Frozen to the county road you know what just happened right here in front of my house I make that happen here sometimes so that's a little bit of a hassle to deal with but you know other than that it's not a problem and you know my bamboo is where I want it to be and if it gets out of that a little bit well I just cut that or harvest that shoot or whatever when the shoots are coming up it's going to be April May or June generally and uh you know if you don't want to eat them and you just want to you know get them out of the way so you don't you can just go by and kick a shoot down I mean that that'll kill it and you know they're not going to come back until next year they'll try again next year there's a few varieties one I have over here that it this time of year it will send up some small things in addition to its spring shooting main season but most bamboos you got that you got to be vigilant and see what's going on out there in April May and June and monitor it and collect your shoots or whatever you're going to do and the rest of the year there's nothing happening so I've kind of I've learned from having to manage some of my Woods that you know going into fall winter that's when I should kind of cut my Hardwoods down and inoculate mushrooms and that's that time of year but then for bamboo it's actually spring that's when you're doing your management I guess of okay or when you when you're harvesting it well yeah if you're harvesting canes and all that I like doing that in the winter time there's no bugs no snakes to worry about no nothing it's Pleasant weather you know find a nice day you're not freezing you know and and get out there yeah winter time is good for cutting the canes and you can stack them up and keep them in the dry and let them dry out good it's a such a useful thing to have I always you know I need something to fix a project or do something I always first thought is could bamboo work for this and almost always it does you know that's neat solved a lot of problems with bamboo yes yeah I built a my tomato trellis is made out of EMT this year which is a wonderful material I love EMT it lasts forever it's galvanized steel but it's really expensive now I mean it's twenty dollars of a pull now for a 10-foot pole I mean it's so this is a this is why I want one of the reasons I want to grow bamboo because then it may not last forever but it I have an unlimited Supply that I can always make another trellis out of for free yeah and and you know some of the bigger Timber bamboos and the ones that have a quality wood that they get uh I mean they'll last five or ten years doing a job for you out in the weather wow you know so maybe that'd be kind of neat maybe use some of the the thicker Timber bamboo as the main post for my trellis and then use a or medium sized ones for the top and that would Blast for you know a decent amount of time absolutely and that's another brings up another thing if you have a homestead and you're going to get into bamboo if you have the room grow more than one species you know grow a Big Timber bamboo grow a medium size that has good taste of shoots maybe or that's why you're growing that one and grow a smaller slender one you know you when you do crafts or projects you kind of need all sizes at times you know now if you're just wanting to if you're wanting to build a bamboo house or Bridge or something well then you just need all that Timber bamboo that's pretty much all you're going to work with unless you add some little decorative smaller things but it's better to have a few varieties to work with I like that so yeah so we need to narrow down what is that what are some of those golden Timber the golden edible and the golden I mean combination right uh for me um my best tasting shoots if I if I was going to grow for them is the they call Yellow Groove is a common name philistakizari I guess I forget these scientific names because I don't talk about it all the time but yeah when I planted all this bamboo here man I had them all at the tip of my tongue uh but that that yellow Groove is a good one for good tasting shoots not very good for quality of wood that would last outside a long time which makes sense because it'll be maybe more softer more supple in the beginning as it comes yeah but I don't know if that it's just some harder bamboos can they'll still be delicious oh absolutely yeah oh yeah so like you know that's why I like hinen because it's not necessarily A best tasting it doesn't have a bad taste but you know I noticed a little better taste with this one and one more I'll mention but the hennen uh is the timber bamboo so you're going to get bigger shoots to eat and you know you got the big canes to work with to build with and do whatever so I like that one because that's you know multi-use you can eat and of course always remember that this stuff stays green year-round so if you have chickens goats sheep cows whatever you can go out in the middle of the winter and cut them some fresh Greenery and throw it in there I'm excited for that that this could be a really big supplement for me for how much for my sheet yeah all my animals really yeah yeah it makes a big difference and they they love it and it's real good for them too right there's a lot of mineral content in bamboo and yeah yeah and see there's another thing like if you in the winter maybe you're going to harvest some big canes that you want to dry and use on a project well all the branches up top you can carry in through to the what livestock yeah yeah so you know works out real good all right we're in my Hendon Grove right now this is one of the Timber bamboos that I was mentioning gives you really big shoots and excellent material to work with this holds up really great outdoors for many many years so this is a good bamboo to have these divisions are called nodes the area in between is called the internode well these internodes are what I don't know eight ten inches something like that we're going to go see another bamboo later that's uh called the flute makers bamboo and it it doesn't get quite as big around this henon but it gets pretty sizable but they call it the flute Maker's bamboo because it has of all the bamboos we could grow around here it has the longest internode and it's long enough to make a flute and have room for all the holes and so yeah a lot of people buy that kind of bamboo rubrow it's Phil stacky's rubro marginata uh they call it that because when the shoots come up the shoots have little like Leaf sheaths on to protect them and along the edge of that sheath it's it's red it's kind of neat looking you know but rubrow means red so it's a red margin and that's why they gave it that name so all the scientific names kind of refer to you know Oria Oreo silcata is yellow Groove you know it's in the sulcus there's a yellow and we just heard a truck go by say this this is real close this is another one I have close to the road and some are right at the edge of the road out there I keep them back about three or four feet I don't let them get past that but some of these lean over in the winter time and give me a little bit of a problem it's not that big a deal but I wanted to say and this this is the Crux of the matter for people with bamboo in America why they're so afraid of it because they don't understand what I'm about to tell you it's how bamboo grows and once you have that knowledge you have a lot more control over the bamboo even eliminating it totally if you want to I had a fellow write to me and he he had a bamboo Grove that was or it was bamboo in his backyard and it was spreading to his neighbor's house and but it was Rocky and not a convenient place he goes you know people were telling him you're gonna have to bring bulldozers in to get all that out you know and it was being a problem for him because it spread to the neighbor's house well I told him how he could totally eliminate that and it would take about three years but no Machinery no nothing just using your smarts okay so and I'll get into that in a second but first I want to tell you how this stuff grows okay when you plant say you order from a nursery you're going to get it like you probably do you're going to order a hidden plant or two or whatever and it might be four or five feet tall and a little three gallon pot or whatever you just plant that within five years you should start seeing Cane's come up about this size but this is the difference we're all used to if you plant a tree it's a little skinny sapling and each year it gets bigger and bigger and it builds upon that Bamboo's not like that at all what they say about bamboo is the first year it sleeps the second year it creeps and the third year it leaps so in that third year it's going to really start taking over some territory that's what it's trying to it'll send Runners out and pop up over there somewhere and so you got to watch it because you want it within where you want to keep it you know but um what what's going on here is when I said after five years you start to see something like this well during those five years the rhizomes are building up and storing energy and becoming a stronger they're all connected all these bamboos here they're all connected to each other underground and that's an interesting thing a lot of bamboos when when they flower they do it all over the world at the same time because they're from the same mother okay they're saying they're all the same so that's pretty interesting but let's say it's five years now and you're going to get canes this big well it doesn't come up skinny and get big over the years it comes up full size and right out of the ground this big fat shoot if you want to eat it it's excellent if you let it keep growing I mean they grow more than a foot a day when they're sending these shoots up and they will make this cane it'll go all the way up to full height whatever the bamboo does 30 feet 50 feet whatever that variety does you'll just see a a solid cane going up there and when it gets to full height then it lays out branches and then it puts on the leaves and so that right what I just described is the key to if you buy a property and it has bamboo and it's gotten out of hand and you'd rather just get rid of it totally okay here's how you do it you use that knowledge of how it grows against it okay so let's say it's this time of year it's September and you want that bamboo totally gone you don't want to leave any let you want it gone go out and cut down all the canes that's your first job now you got to be real observant and Vigilant in the springtime when they start sending they're gonna you know just because you cut them down isn't going to stop anything okay in the spring they're going to send shoots up you want to let them do that let them send a shoot up the whole way because it's drawing energy from the rhizome system to do that that's a lot of energy to make something like that and let it lay out the branches that's some more energy getting sapped but as soon as you see the first hint of a leaf coming on cut everything down again well that really sets it back and it's not going to like that but it'll wait until late summer and it might send up some little small things which you can do the same process with and get rid of them and next year here comes some more big canes I mean you might do this two three years four I don't know but you just keep with it you are constantly weakening that rhizome system you never let it get leaves out where it can draw energy do photosynthesis and feed itself and eventually they die and you will have no bamboo there so no chemicals no bulldozers you don't you know that's not necessary all right we're back here where I have some black bamboo growing uh it had a die off in the winter sometimes it gets cold enough it kills the top but the roots survive and it comes back so this is this is still recovering from that but the thing the cool thing about black bamboo and it gets like here's a black bamboo it gets a lot bigger in diameter than this when it's you know a healthy Grove it's you know not recovering from a disaster so it'd probably be at least an inch or inch and a quarter in diameter and when they first come up a new cane will have some black and some green on it but the older they get they just turn pitch black and the unique thing about black bamboo or one it's a real pretty bamboo like if you have a pond or something it likes to Arch and and it just it looks real pretty you know so people like it for that but um the uh the Blackness never goes away with all other bamboos if they're green or yellow or green with a yellow stripe or whatever that all disappears when you cut them and they dry out they just turn that tan color you used to see in bamboo look like but the black bamboo stays black and Japanese highly value this for Fine Furniture making and it's a good quality wood there's two kinds of bamboo clumping Bamboo and running bamboo clumping Bamboo just when it adds when it spreads it's just right next to everything it's just it's a tight Clump and you know if you go to South America somewhere where they have a whole giant forest of this you can't even get it you can't go in there okay in fact there was a I wish I knew the details in the story I can't remember which explorer it was that went to it was in Northern South America somewhere you know not Cortez I mean I don't know one of those guys and you know ready to rape and pillage and find gold you know right like they were doing back then and he found this Village it was a bamboo culture in South America in a bamboo Jungle of of of the clumping bamboo and the only way to the Village was they had cleared a straight walkway that got you way back in there and then they had opened it up and they had their Village back there it was the only way in and out and it was well defended so he had trouble attacking that place and was losing men so you know they came up with a solution that you know just burned the whole place down now we got in there see if they have any gold okay so you know pretty horrible but anyway the clumping bamboo is pretty amazing how it's so tight-packed this the running bamboo doesn't get so densely packed usually and you know it likes to spread out and travel and move to new places and that's what causes a lot of people trouble if you've grown it in the city or something if you're going to grow it in the city or suburbs it should be in a pot I think and just appreciate what you can get that way if you do want to do multiple a few different varieties that's is it better to spread them further absolutely like remember what I said now you got however tall your bamboo is that's how far out it's going to send rhizomes well you want to be you know Skip a little space and put your next one in where if it's coming that direction they're not going to meet or gonna be a lot of space in between you can clearly keep them apart and and also I'll mention you know for Homestead you know it's a money making thing I mean you can sell obviously you can sell crafts made out of bamboo you could sell the bamboo shoots if you can get a market for that but you can sell young plants that come up and bamboo is very pricey if you go look up on a bamboo just look up bamboo Groves like I said I like Lewis bamboo and Jasper Alabama good folks they'll UPS you whatever you want their website's very informative teach you all about the different varieties so you know you could have a little bamboo Nursery very easily and if you had separate varieties that you kept separate so you knew that what you're selling was that variety uh you know you grow them fruit you have to you can dig them up and the small when you see small ones coming up along the edge of the Grove or something or late summer when sometimes they send up a little boy those are excellent dig them up and you pot them and you raise them in a pot for a full year okay so that they are very well rooted and then when you sell it it's going to survive you know if you just dig them up and sell them you know they might not make it so but you can make a lot of money selling bamboo all right here we are in between two two Big Bamboo Groves a bigger bamboo goes up quite high and we are close to the road but uh just a nice little peaceful walk through here and uh I did want to say one thing about um if you're doing craft work or building with bamboo uh you need to know how it it structured all the grain is exactly parallel so you know you can take a machete on the end of it and split it into two halves and and pull them it splits perfectly down the middle and then you can split that and split that you can get I mean in Japan they get down to microscopic and Mickey's little tiny baskets they do amazing things with bamboo but um if you're going to build like you want to put a nail or a screw or something you can't you can't do like you can with a stick of wood as soon as you drive a nail or screw in there it's going to start splitting that bamboo so all the holes have to be pre-drilled so the the screw or nail passes through the bamboo easily and then into whatever you're nailing it to so you know that that's a key thing to know if you're trying to work with it because it's different I made that mistake I just put a screw through it yep and then it split yeah yep now you know what to do I brought us down here now too this is the uh philistaki's Ruger marginata the flute makers bamboo and had a bit of a disaster here last winter if you notice a lot of these canes are not growing straight up they're growing sideways we're tilted quite a bit well what happened is we had a big ice and snowstorm and the wind blowing also from the north and it pushed all that bamboo off and waited it down with ice and snow and and then they couldn't you know they they weren't able to rise back up usually bamboo will do that and then it just Rises back up but they're all laying on top of each other waiting everybody down and it's all stuck there and so I've got a big project ahead of me I I want to cut any bamboo it's not growing straight up and down is coming out it's going to be a major scalping of this thing but I got to get it back like it was and we'll take a closer look at this bamboo now because this is the flute maker I want to show you why they call it that come on Peter Pete okay there's the bridge which unfortunately I used gravel to fill in here this is all gravel about that deep I used gravel from the creek which had so much silt in it it's growing stuff I mean I should take it all off and use just get bring some Limestone gravel and then it would I wouldn't have to mow whatever or anything but this thing's Rock Solid it's going to be here forever I started out with two Big Cedar trunks side by side and I set them on the bank but not on the soil they're up on rocks okay so they're they're in and now they're in the dry because I've built all this on top so what I did is the next thing on top of those two uh trunks I got a uh see this was 14 feet I had a 14 foot cattle gate you know the big Stout you know rounded metal you know okay and I laid that across the two cedar logs and then on top of that I had a bunch of roofing metal roofing just left over from a project and so I I started running it this way and that way and there's probably five or six layers of roofing and then I got all these rocks that go up right against the rib of the roofing so they can't be pushed out and I filled in with gravel and and it's sort of it's like a covered bridge because you know the what's holding the bridge up is not out in the weather it's protected from the rain it's up off the ground and it's Cedar so I think I'm going to have a bridge here for a while yeah at least 50 years yeah it'll outlive me this is uh the flute makers bamboo or philistaki's rubro marginata remember the other one the Hendon was probably about that long this is a this is the longest one you can get and it gets pretty you can see it gets pretty sizeable and has excellent tasting shoots that was going to say this one and the yellow Groove are my two favorite for the shoots tell us about the adult and the Dulce yeah there is one I guess it's just philistaki's Dulce uh Dulce is Spanish for sweet it has real sweet tasting shoots um you know you can eat them without even cooking them they're just sweet and I have some way up on the mountain but a lot of the ones I've planted out in the woods that started out with a nice light opening the trees around them were just so tall they still weren't getting what they need and so a lot of them are alive and putting up a few shoots but it's not thriving like the ones I have in the full sun this has good tasting shoots and good wood yeah whereas the yellow Groove the wood's not that great really not and if I haven't mentioned it uh when a cane comes up if you're going to use it for wood you want to have it be three or four years old okay it takes at least three years for that wood to really harden up and be what you want and then after four years it starts to go downhill a little bit so three to four year old bamboo is prime time how do you know it's three or four years old well uh pay attention well you could just pay attention but you know you could tell Maybe by looking at the quality of the cane you know like like this one looks like it's more weathered you know I would guess that that's probably okay to use for wood better than this one which I think came up this year it's real bright green and everything but I know the Japanese when they manage a Grove uh they they keep the bamboo Cuts so that they can walk its shoulder width where they can walk through without you know squeezing or anything and what they do in the spring when all the shoots first come up they go out there and they scratch in the bamboo and they write the date or at least the year that that came up so then they they can know when three or four years old stuff is there you'll still be able to see those marks so that's a good way a lot of people who kind of fear bamboo or don't like that people were planting invasive species in our country and that kind of thing well you know like I said I mean they have an invasive characteristic to them but they're they're only dangerously invasive if you don't pay attention to them and you don't work with them so you know that that's how how we need to be more with the bamboo but people think they'll say things like well it's going to take over habitat and replace our natural environment and it's going to mess up the woods and all that well first of all you got to realize we're nowhere near some pristine thing that needs to be preserved exactly as it is this is the drugs I mean it's beautiful but it's the dregs of what's left over from a lot of Destruction okay we've clear-cut forests and you know turned Fields into parking lots and just I mean we've changed so much so it's I'm not saying any of this deserves to be destroyed and Bamboo's not going to destroy it I mean think of China or Japan they have huge bamboo Groves and they maintain them and they use the bamboo and it's a valued thing but they also have regular hardwood forests it's not like they lost all their forests because they had bamboo it doesn't work that way and you know once you know more about bamboo and people will be making use of it well it's not going to spread as much because you're in you're paying attention and and you're waiting for those shoots so you can eat them or so forth so you know that's just something I want to mention it's not there's we're not needing to preserve things exactly as they are and that's always true whether you're talking about bamboo or anything I mean there's there's national parks and forests we have that they're trying to cut away certain species that have come in so so that that Forest will be like it was in 1894. well that was 1894 the world's changing all the time nature is always changing and you know and I think that given enough time all the bamboo around the world would fill in any Niche that suited it temperature and climate wise we're just facilitating that happen faster because people were moving the bamboo around the world but I think it would end up there eventually on its own somehow over time if more people were knowledgeable about bamboo and all the great uses it has then it would be like in in some Asian countries where really bamboo probably has a hard time spreading because people are always up there cutting it down and taking the shoots and making use of it you know so it can't spread it's just if you ignore it you know then you just you know seated down something that's who knows what it's going to do but just remember it's not going to spread into the forest much at all because it's shaded that was good for me to know because I want to build I have an idea about making a fun little Trail into my Hardwoods and then inside of the hardwoods is a little you know some nice chairs and a little place to rest and you know a peaceful area I can't remember the name of this Grove it's in North Georgia that I visited and it's been there for 50 years the guy he planted a whole bunch of different kinds he has roads cut through there and all and uh it's it's like it was you walk in there it's it's so dark I was there at 12 noon and it was so dark you really sort of needed a flashlight it's that dense you know and but why did I mention his it was oh and he had a place where uh the bamboo was at the edge of the woods okay so he had a big Grove out here but some of it had spread you know you know 50 feet 100 feet up here you might see one cane just here and there but to me it's like yeah it's getting along fine with the forest yeah not hurting anything right you know it looked kind of cool oh I wanted to ask you about my question propagation like let's say I wanted to you know take some bamboo from you or from a friend's place when do you dig it up and then how do you get it to successfully transplant in your plot you can dig bamboo or transplant it any time of the year when the ground's not frozen okay but I would say a better time would be early spring maybe or this time of year where it has a few months before the hard freeze comes to get established you know those might be the best I wouldn't plan it right the beginning of the hot summer unless you're going to be out there watering it a lot because that first year you might have to keep it watered and take care of it but after that there's no care needed for the bamboo it's drought tolerant and grows in just about any kind of soil and you know it's great if you have an erosion problem you know bamboo is excellent with that system of rhizomes I don't hold the soil so good and it doesn't have to be a real tall band could be some of those short ones I was showing you down there and it's just holding your soil down and looks beautiful I like that for erosion control that's a really smart idea I really like that so then another uh what about putting them in a pot that's another thing you could do right yeah dig them up put them in a pot you can have them in there for a year if you want you're kind of mentioning that for oh yeah you want to grow The Roots so the roots are really good when you sell it to someone it'll actually take root and go if you plant it in a pot make sure it's not a pot that comes up and goes in a little like that you know because if you ever want to get the bamboo roots and soil out of that pot you're gonna have a tough time so you want a pot that's like this shape so you can pull that whole plug out easily okay because the roots are going to go around and they're they're thick and hard and they don't decompose very quickly I've got a pot over here I've been hoping things with decompose in there the past two years but I don't know when I'm going to be able to get that soil out but you know I could get in there with a reciprocell and cut roots and really fight it I guess but it's okay I'll let nature do it uh I want to make sure people are going to learn about bamboo that was my main purpose to talk here today uh and I have there's a lot of books about bamboo fascinating topic but I have two here that I think people would find especially interesting if you want to learn more about bamboo the first one is if you're serious about buying bamboo and planting it on your property and you're trying to figure out what variety do I want you know what what uses does it have how big does it get how cold can it take in the winter this book right here bamboo for gardeners Ted Jordan Meredith uh I I really value this is one of my most valuable bamboo books I love this thing and he gives so much detail about each species and you really learn a lot about the different bamboos and how they grow and all it's everything you need to know in here this is really a great book if you're maybe not going to raise bamboo but you like the idea or you're fascinated by bamboo you think it's an interesting thing then I would highly recommend this book for anybody it's it's the it's the book of bamboo it's called by David ferrelli um history it's a lot of the history of bamboo around the world how bamboo cultures have come and gone and uh it's also information about how bamboo grows and and information about different species but most to me the most fascinating thing was the history and all and I'll tell you one little teaser to get you get you in on it uh because it blew me away when I read it back in China back I think it was in the 1800s sometime they had a situation where there were roving bands of Banditos stealing from people and you know taking all their Farm uh animals or you know whatever and so there was a place in bamboo in in China where there was a really big lake and so all these people got together and they started building bamboo rafts out of Big Bamboo you know they made platforms that float in the lake and then on top of those they'd build a house they'd build raised garden beds and bring soil and put it there which could reach down into the lake with the roots and so they didn't have to water their garden beds they had fruit trees growing in the same way they had farm animals out there they became a whole town a bamboo town where the buildings and the platform and they had horse cut where you could fish you could just sit right there in your house I guess and go fishing if you cut a hole in the floor and and so they all so they had a whole bunch of people living together growing their food and animals and they were protected they were far away from the shore and if anybody tried to come well there's a lot of people there to see them coming and and mount a defense yeah so I thought that was just a really cool thing that is really cool yeah so lots of neat things like that in that book and I'll leave you with the last thing I want to read this to you this is about the nutritional value of bamboo shoots if you're going to eat them or your animals are going to eat them all right it says pickled dried Frozen or fresh bamboo shoots are a low calorie source of potassium and protein also contains magnesium germanium both said to have anti-cancer and anti-aging functions young shoots are rich in nutrient components mainly proteins carbohydrates minerals and fiber and are low in fat and sugar there are they are a good source of thiamine niacin vitamins a B6 and e potassium calcium manganese zinc copper iron and chromium and contains 17 different amino acids eight of which are essential for human health another component in bamboo shoots is phytosterols photonutrients phytonutrients that are similar to cholesterol yet have been shown to inhibit the absorption of cholesterol in its intestinal tract in the intestinal tract and help lower bad LDL low density lipoproteins cholesterol so a healthy food to eat so this is Daryl's spring fed pond and this is one of the gourds that he he grew he used to grow and sell gourds yeah and then decorate them and make things out of them yeah this is this is an old door this is probably 30 years old for stuff on thank you foreign [Applause]

Channel: Nature's Always Right

Views: 1,145,808

Keywords: learn about bamboo, bamboo tour, homestead tour, kaye kittrell late bloomer, darrell luck, steven cornett, nature's always right, how to grow bamboo, bamboo homestead, bamboo, bamboo garden, bamboo garden tour, bamboo grove tour, tennessee bamboo, how to raise bamboo plants, how to raise bamboo

Id: C5Ke83_QKtk

Length: 40min 0sec (2400 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 14 2023