From David Beaulieu,
Your Guide to Landscaping.
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An invasive, running bamboo has overtaken your property. How do you remove it, without resorting to herbicides? Digging, smothering and cutting are some of the recommended methods for bamboo eradication....

A.

1. Digging

Digging to remove bamboo may work for small patches but is problematic for larger stands. Wet the soil first, then pick a shoot to start with and begin digging gingerly around the base. After you've loosened the soil enough to wiggle the plant, tug at it gently. You want to try to pull up as much of the plant and its rhizome system as possible with your tug, as opposed to just ripping it out and leaving a lot of the rhizomes behind.

Sift through the soil in the hole to check for rhizomes. Repeat for next shoot. Some rhizomes will inevitably remain unharvested, resulting in fresh shoots, later; so be prepared to have to repeat the entire operation(as I said, this method may work for small patches).

2. Smothering

Another method used to remove bamboo is smothering with tarps. However, note that the bamboo may be able to outflank the tarps by spreading beyond their perimeters. Therefore, employing tarps can result in the bamboo's popping up somewhere else in the yard -- clearly not a desirable result!

To prevent such a result, consider using the smothering method in conjunction with burying bamboo barriers. Earlier, I discussed laying barriers as a preventive measure; but here, I'm referring to the use of bamboo barriers as an aid to an eradication program. The tarp and the bamboo barrier will complement each other.

3. Cutting

The American Bamboo Society recommends the cutting method, which, in sum, runs as follows:

1. Cut the bamboo shoots down
2. Apply water to the area
3. Cut down the new crop of bamboo that will result
4. Repeat the above, as needed

So far in this FAQ series, we've looked at the best of bamboo (its usefulness) and the worst (the invasiveness of running bamboo and the difficulty involved in its eradication). To conclude this series on bamboo, I look at three plants that, although they have "bamboo" in their names, are not actually bamboos. I'll begin with so-called "Mexican bamboo," in the next FAQ....

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