3 ms·

I didn't see bamboo mentioned. It grows crazy fast. I don't know if it's technically "invasive", but I imagine it's fueled quite a few neighbor feuds.

• vlozko 5y ago
  I assume you mean Japanese Knotweed? That stuff is nearly impossible to fully remove.
  • meepmorp 5y ago
    I assume they mean actual bamboo, some species of which grow over a meter per day. It’s also incredibly hard to remove and spreads very fast.
    • hkt 5y ago
      Simple solution, get a pet panda. The circle of life!
  • MichaelGroves 5y ago
    I doubt many, if any, would confuse the two. Bamboo is notorious for being hard to kill. It spreads underground using shoots, and those shoots can reemerge again and again every time you chop down the bamboo patch.
    • vlozko 5y ago
      I've had to deal with some on my own property. The best solution I found, short of replacing the layer of infested dirt, is to inject some concentrated glyphosate into its hollow center stalk closer to the root. It tends to be resilient when just spraying the leaves.
• asquabventured 5y ago
  Can confirm, once rented a house with bamboo in the backyard, it’s awful awful stuff and will spread very easily The only way to keep it from moving further into yards or gardens is to pour concrete trenches it can’t grow thru. impossible to eradicate entirely and while it’s shooting new sprouts up from the ground after its first day or two of softness starts to get more wood like and are wicked sharp easily being able to pierce through skin/clothes/shoes and cause some nasty cuts. No one should ever plant that stuff voluntarily!
  • ourmandave 5y ago
    If you could borrow a couple giant pandas from the local zoo for a few days, that would be a win-win.
  • throwaway09223 5y ago
    Bamboo is fairly easy to contain- just surround the area with a 60mil thick plastic barrier. I've been growing bamboo for two decades in my yard without issue. It also won't spread beyond wet areas, so a lot of people control it simply by not watering the surrounding areas. In terms of maintenance, bamboo only shoots for a few weeks in the spring - it won't grow at all for the rest of the year. The real scourge in my yard are the weeds that grow year-round.
    • asquabventured 5y ago
      At least in northern Virginia it sprouted shoots all spring and summer and it was not in a wet/non draining area or an area we ever watered. Maybe different species have different growing characteristics but the one we had was awful and constantly was trying to creep from the side of the back yard into the main lawn area.
      • throwaway09223 5y ago
        I could see it being a lot harder to contain in the south. I'm in a dry area in California and it won't grow where I don't water. There are definitely different species of bamboo. The two main categories are running and clumping. Running bamboo is the hardest to contain, with rhizomes that travel long distances. Clumping bamboo spreads slowly.
    • pvaldes 5y ago
      Can fall to mention that bamboo shoots are edible when very young. Very good mixed with macaroni in my opinion. I would never plant bamboo in my garden in any case but if you have it, treat it like a vegetable. If it can't be cut applying a slight pressure with a potato knife is too old. Discard the hard central parts. Cook the soft parts near nodes.
• erikerikson 5y ago
  Some is, some isn't. We chose to back out of a house offer due to invasive bamboo when the owner was unwilling to reduce the price to cover professional removal.
  • echelon 5y ago
    That's a really specific ask. I feel like a different species sometimes when dealing with humans that negotiate this hard. I tend to overpay and be done with it so I can think about other things, but I suppose that's leaving money on the table. The last place I bought had a giant crack in the concrete floor. Inspector said it was fine, so I just let it slide.
    • erikerikson 5y ago
      I have certainly accepted some large inefficiencies in a purchase including the house I live in now. This was a case where the seller had mowed back the bamboo and placed weed barrier and fresh soil to hide it. There hadn't been any visible bamboo during the viewing that precipitated our offer. About 3 days later we inspected and found pervasive multi-inch long shoots of bamboo throughout the yard including big shoots going into a supporting shared wall with the neighbor and into the neighbor's yard as well as into the house foundation and siding. To completely remove the bamboo we would have had a large excavation that included tearing out and rebuilding the entry walkway disrupting our use of the home. To pay someone to do the labor, guarantee removal (there are specialist companies), and perform the geo-engineering work was estimated to cost 25-30K here in Seattle. To be clear, we did ask the seller to reduce their price to accommodate that work because we felt we had offered a generous (and competitive above many competing offers) price for the house. That price did not include removing the hidden-at-the-time-of-offer bamboo. The seller didn't like that which was their right. They rejected our counter and months later sold the house for less than our offer minus the cost of the bamboo removal. [edit: planting invasive bamboo in your yard literally reduces the value of your home]
• 11235813213455 5y ago
  they need wet soils though
• xkcd-sucks 5y ago
  Bamboo is pretty manageable, it stops sending out new shoots by midsummer and if you really want to eradicate it you can chop it down and paint the stumps with herbicide. Bittersweet OTOH is horrible, it colonizes everything, strangles 100 foot trees, grows roots in every direction, and makes tons of berries that get distributed by critters (I.e. crosses roads and rivers from adjacent land even if you manage to eradicate it on your own property)