Major bamboo removal in our front yard

This post is both of a source of sadness and excitement for me. Why? Because we're losing another clumping bamboo, leaving just two. That's a considerable decrease since the early days of this blog when it was called “Bamboo and More.” I still love bamboo, but since our garden is so small, every square foot matters—and bamboo takes up a significant chunk of real estate.

Since Monday was curbside yard waste pickup here in Davis, I decided to use the weekend to remove the clump of Asian lemon bamboo (Bambusa eutuldoides 'Viridivittata') in the front yard:

It's been a huge presence in this spot for many years:

It took several saw blades, but my trusty reciprocating saw made relatively quick work of what was a surprisingly massive biomass.

When you look at the after picture, you realize how much space this clump had taken up:

OK, if you're fortunate enough to garden on a multi-acre property, you might be laughing out loud, but in my universe, this is a pretty sizable area.

I dragged the cut-off culms into street where they made a sizable pile. A neighbor was able to use a good half of the culms for a garden project so this is what was left for yard waste pickup:

Lest you get the wrong idea, the yard waste folks would not have picked up such a jumbled mess. We needed to make piles no more than 6 ft. in length, which required quite a bit of cutting. My hard-working wife did most of that.

When you look at the following photos, another major benefit of not having the bamboo becomes obvious: much more sun for the plants outside and inside the fence.

Because this clump of bamboo had been so tall and leaning every which way—but especially out over the street—the plants underneath it had to contend with a fairly significant amount of shade. This had caused some of them, including the Aloe excelsa on the left in the next photo, to lean forward.

Left to right: Aloe 'Yemeni Gold' (green plant on the left), Aloe excelsa, Yucca 'Bright Star' (front), Aloe marlothii

The area on the right—the Santa Cruz Island ironwood (Lyonothamnus floribundus ssp. aspleniifolius) that replaced the nasty Bradford pear and the Agave 'Mr Ripple' in the Corten container—was in significant shade most of the day. We should now see much faster growth there.

The two clumping bamboos in the background—Bambusa oldhamii and Bambusa chungii 'Barbellata'—are all that's left now in the bamboo department

The area inside the fence also gets more sun now:

In the winter, the extra sun will be much appreciated by the plants in the smaller succulent mound (on the left in the photo below):

One final look at the wide open space where the bamboo used to be:

The final frontier will be the removal of what's left in the ground—a virtually solid mass of culm stumps. The first thing I'm going to try is salpeter (potassium nitrate), the active ingredient in many tree stump removal products. I have no idea if it will work, but we'll see soon enough. One thing is certain: I won't be able to plant anything new until the mass is gone.

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