About our Henon Grove

Henon grows well in the Pacific Northwest. It is necessary to thin it.

This truck has just a small part of the annual thinnings from a 2000 square foot grove.

Most herbivores love to eat bamboo. Elephants particularly love it.

They rip the branches off the canes and eat leaves, twigs and branches.

They even eat the stems. If you have a grove of bamboo to thin,

consider taking it to the zoo. Call first to make arrangements.

Bamboo Technologies prefabricates its houses in the Bamboo Hardwoods'

factory in Vietnam. The houses are ICBO approved and have been permitted and built in Hawaii, USA.

Washington State University in Puyallop, Washington, USA, east of Tacoma and south of Seattle planted bamboo for research in spring of 2001. This photo was taken in summer of 2004. These are replicated field plots. There are seven varieties of Phyllostachys each replicated randomly four times. Each square is 25 feet on a side. The initial research will be on water management. Dr. Craig Cogger is soil and crop scientist in charge of the project.

Bamboo has the potential to increase profits substantially on farms in USDA Zones 7 and 8. Fresh bamboo shoots are a succulent vegetable commanding high farmgate prices. The United States imports 30,000 tons of canned bamboo shoots every year. Fresh ones taste better than canned ones. They are not available. Bamboo is harvested for bamboo shoots every spring. Bamboo poles are harvested every winter. The leafy tops are relished by livestock who grow strong on the 18% protein and 4% fat in the leaves.

Grasses are very successful, efficient plants. There are more than 5,000 species of grass in the grass family, gramineae. Bamboos are the woody tribe within the grass family. Bamboos are successful and efficient like the rest of the grasses.

There are 1350 species of bamboo. Bamboos convert sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into wood very efficiently. Bamboo grows wood faster and more sustainably than trees. Bamboo should be harvested for food and for wood annually for best yields – like hay. After harvest no replanting (no reforestation) is needed. Bamboo wood fiber is the ultimate renewable resource. Private citizens introduced bamboo into the United States as an ornamental plant beginning in the late 1800's. The United States Department of Agriculture began introducing and researching bamboo as a new farm crop around 1919. Although the Department continued these activities off and on for 50 years, farmers and the general public remained unaware of bamboo's potential as a profitable farm crop. In 1979 Richard Haubrich formed the American Bamboo Society in Southern California. Since 1980 introductions of bamboo have occurred mainly through the American Bamboo Society using their quarantine greenhouses.

Public awareness in the United States of the role bamboo can play as a farm crop and for bioremediation began with the Pacific Northwest Bamboo Agro-forestry Workshop in 1994. Gib Cooper of Tradewinds Bamboo Nursery in Gold Beach, Oregon, conceived of and carried out this important event. "Proceedings" are available through Tradewinds Bamboo Nursery 541-247-0160; 247-0835; http://www.harborside.com/bamboo/. Awareness of bamboo, especially among the scientists and teachers in County Extension, Soil Conservation, and Ag colleges, increased dramatically when Tradewinds joined with Carol Miles, Ph.D., Washington State University Cooperative Extension, milesc@wsu.edu, to put on the Second Bamboo Agroforestry workshop in June of 1997. Since 1994 County Extension agents, agronomists, and bioremediation engineers have begun investigating bamboo.

Weather Affects Yield of Bamboo Shoots

In the 1960's Maxwell Canterbury planted 6 starts of bamboo on the north side of his driveway. In time the bamboo, Phyllostachys nigra henon, grew together to form a thick hedge. In the 1970's Maxwell dug starts from this hedge and planted a new hedge on his north property line. He intended to hide the new houses being built there. In the year 2000, we can not see the houses next door.

In 1995 I decided to introduce bamboo to farmers in the United States as a new and profitable crop. I do not own land so I asked Maxwell Canterbury if I could use his groves to generate data. I needed to find out how much income a bamboo grove could generate. How many pounds of bamboo shoots could a farm grove produce per acre per year? Max and I began thinning his groves in the summer of 1995. I harvested bamboo shoots for the first time in May, 1996 and sold them to Charlie's Produce, a produce distributor, in Seattle, Washington. In 1996 and 1997 we finished thinning the Driveway Grove. Thinning took several years because Max had to get used to the look of an open grove. He was used to a crowded hedge and had loved it that way for 30 years. Now that the Grove is open, Max thinks it looks beautiful. By 1998 the Driveway Grove was open enough to allow for easy access for harvesting.

In the Pacific Northwest yield of henon bamboo shoots is greatly affected by the temperatures in May and June. Probably temperatures in April affects yield somewhat. Perhaps early shooting bamboos are best for shoot production in a cold spring climate. When planting mid and late season bamboos, it is imperative to plant in a location where soil warms easily in spring. South facing slopes warm more quickly than north facing ones. Loam soil dries and warms more quickly than clay soil. Perhaps late shooting bamboos should be managed for poles rather than for shoots in a cold spring climate. By monitoring daily temperatures and soil temperatures it is possible to estimate the start date of harvest and perhaps the volume of the harvest.

In previous articles I suggested larger yield per acre than those in the chart above. In those articles I separated the Driveway Grove which has produced well from the North Grove which has not. The Driveway Grove differs from the North Grove in the following five ways. Its soil is drier and warmer. It has more mycorrhizal fungi. It is thinned well. It has larger culms. It was planted 15 years earlier. Notice in the table below that the North Grove hovers between .8 ton and 1+ acre ton an acre. The Driveway Grove varies between less than a ton an acre and two tons an acre.