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I have bamboo growing in my backyard. I don't know why, but I do. I guess the previous owner thought it was a good idea.

It's taking over my backyard, in a few years I will have a small bamboo Forrest the rate it is growing and taking over everything.

I've tried everything short of setting it on fire.

Poisons, salting it, cutting it down and digging it up with a tiller. The stuff will not die. 4 years I have been trying to get rid of it, every year it gets bigger and bigger. In some areas it's 4 or 5 feet deep and now it's starting to pop up out of neighboring bushes.

Thinking I should get a pet panda.

How can I get rid of bamboo permanently?

http://homeguides.sfgate.com/kill-bamboo-permanently-38065.html

Giving that article a quick read it sounds like bamboo is the plant equivalent of cockroaches.

All of the suggestions in the article are things you have already done, but it sounds like those steps need to be repeated regularly over a long period of time. Good luck!

1. Flamethrower
2. Panda
3. Panda with flamethrower.

Have you tried calling your fish and wildlife or department of natural resources office? They should have some info to help you remove that since I'd imagine bamboo is an invasive for where you live.

My job at the moment is to go to people's houses like yours, remove invasives, and potentially plant native plants afterwards. Depending on the office and what you need to done, it should be fairly cheap, possibly even free.

We had Bamboo growing by our house in Maineand what we did to get rid of it was chop it down and cover it with a tarp. It died off after about a month.

Or you have just found yourself the best possible secondary income. Make all sorts of gak out of it. Hipsters and enviro people go nuts for that stuff.

You need to get EVERY trace of the rhizome (root) when you dig it out.

Otherwise it WILL grow back. The rhizome is fairly shallow in the soil (usually only about a foot down in the soil, but it runs horizontally everywhere).
ALL plants, however, will need sunlight. Cut it off from this and you can slow it down enough to get rid of it.

Rabbits LOVE eating the rhizome. Some friends of mine had pet rabbits and a couple of clumps of the clumping sort (not as prolific as the kind you have, it forms clumps off the rhizome). They ate it down to the ground and then tunnelled down and ate it further.

 Frazzled wrote:
1. Flamethrower
2. Panda
3. Panda with flamethrower.

That earns my exalt for the day.

You need to get a pair of dueling samurai/ninja. They Love to run around in the stuff and chop it down.

Plant some Japanese Knotweed amongst it. Fight invasive plants with even more invasive plants!

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Plant some Japanese Knotweed amongst it. Fight invasive plants with even more invasive plants!

But then how do we combat the knotweed?

Bacon.

Nuke it from Orbit, that's the only way to be sure.

Also, dig up all of the roots. Bamboo is a pain in the ass.

 Leigen_Zero wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Plant some Japanese Knotweed amongst it. Fight invasive plants with even more invasive plants!

But then how do we combat the knotweed?

An even more invasive plant.

It's the circle of life at its finest.

Roundup?

I second fire.
Fire kills everything. Except Cockroaches.

cry us a river, build a bridge out of the bamboo, and you are over it.


but I think frazz's idea with the panda + flamethrower will work better

You may never be able to fully get rid of it, because of the rhizome problem, without totally removing the entire surface for a few feet down and replacing the soil.

Even blocking the sunlight may not cut it, shoots can grow through a lot of substrates to reach sunlight. Bamboo shoots are one of the more tenacious shoots out there, the myths about them growing through the living bodies of prisoners in China are true(see Mythbusters)

I would suggest just learning to live with it. Keep it trimmed and isolated to a particular location. Bamboo is cool!

Let this be a lesson to anyone wanting to plant bamboo. Make sure it's the noninvasive, clumping stuff.

To the OP, have you tried putting barriers around the existing bamboo to block the roots from spreading? That won't get rid of it, but it might contain it and buy you time.

For some invasive plants, I've had success with the following: cut it down as close to the ground as you can. Then cover it with a large tarp, and stake it down. Leave the tarp for as long as you feel comfortable with it being there. Without sunlight, the plants die, and the dead material can be removed once it's sat long enough to ensure that it won't start regrowth.

I don't know that this would be effective in your case, but it might.

We used to make javelins (bamboo weighed down with oranges like the roman javelins), spears, swords, bows and armour with bamboo and have wars. All thanks to a neighbour near one of the holiday homes. He had a huge forest of it and we just went in and cut down what we needed.

A quartere of the forest was gone after 2 weeks. If there are kids nearby whose parents dont mind them throwing blunt javelins at each other just invite them to take whatever they need.

Bamboo was the best toy we had. Was pretty cool when all the kids on the block had massive bamboo wars for control of the resource. looking back we could easily have had fatalities the way we played... but was still fun.

If that fails, its better to plant the chocking vine. It ruins the bamboo big time but you need a lot of it. Otherwise it takes a loooong time.

 Swastakowey wrote:
We used to make javelins (bamboo weighed down with oranges like the roman javelins), spears, swords, bows and armour with bamboo and have wars. All thanks to a neighbour near one of the holiday homes. He had a huge forest of it and we just went in and cut down what we needed.

A quartere of the forest was gone after 2 weeks. If there are kids nearby whose parents dont mind them throwing blunt javelins at each other just invite them to take whatever they need.

Bamboo was the best toy we had. Was pretty cool when all the kids on the block had massive bamboo wars for control of the resource. looking back we could easily have had fatalities the way we played... but was still fun.

That is pretty cool. When I was a kid there was a large empty lot next to my house and a buddy and I would go to the lot and throw rocks and dirt clods at each other.

Improvised toys are the best toys sometimes.

 DarkTraveler777 wrote:

 Swastakowey wrote:
We used to make javelins (bamboo weighed down with oranges like the roman javelins), spears, swords, bows and armour with bamboo and have wars. All thanks to a neighbour near one of the holiday homes. He had a huge forest of it and we just went in and cut down what we needed.

A quartere of the forest was gone after 2 weeks. If there are kids nearby whose parents dont mind them throwing blunt javelins at each other just invite them to take whatever they need.

Bamboo was the best toy we had. Was pretty cool when all the kids on the block had massive bamboo wars for control of the resource. looking back we could easily have had fatalities the way we played... but was still fun.

That is pretty cool. When I was a kid there was a large empty lot next to my house and a buddy and I would go to the lot and throw rocks and dirt clods at each other.

*Improvised toys are the best toys sometimes.

*When you are poor.

Had to be done.

I agree though, the most fun I had as a child was hanging out in a nearby forest and just doing stupid gak with whatever we found. Except for that freshly severed goat leg, that was just terrifying.

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 Leigen_Zero wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Plant some Japanese Knotweed amongst it. Fight invasive plants with even more invasive plants!

But then how do we combat the knotweed?

An even more invasive plant.

It's the circle of life at its finest.

And then you bring in an invasive beetle to control the plants!

ITS FOOLPROOF

Tarping it might work.

If it grows and rips the tarp try a piece of Plywood or something

Or a Panda who knows Kung-Fu

Dig. If you think 2 foot deep and 4 feet wide is good to get it then your doing it wrong. 4 foot deep 5 feet wide

 Jihadin wrote:
Dig. If you think 2 foot deep and 4 feet wide is good to get it then your doing it wrong. 4 foot deep 5 feet wide

This, then make it a fire pit. I know they were having issues with it in Rhode Island in a few places. After a season of burning stuff in the pit, it didn't come back.

Being close to the neighbor's property, that may not work.

To quote... some bloke in a film (I think it was Valkyrie):

"In my experience, there is no problem on God's Earth that cannot be solved by high explosives."

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 Leigen_Zero wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Plant some Japanese Knotweed amongst it. Fight invasive plants with even more invasive plants!

But then how do we combat the knotweed?

An even more invasive plant.

It's the circle of life at its finest.

And then you bring in an invasive beetle to control the plants!

ITS FOOLPROOF

then what about the beetle?

 Leigen_Zero wrote:

 MrMoustaffa wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:

 Leigen_Zero wrote:

 Avatar 720 wrote:
Plant some Japanese Knotweed amongst it. Fight invasive plants with even more invasive plants!

But then how do we combat the knotweed?

An even more invasive plant.

It's the circle of life at its finest.

And then you bring in an invasive beetle to control the plants!

ITS FOOLPROOF

then what about the beetle?

Boot...