How to Kill Bamboo
Video transcription
Hi this is Yolanda Vanveen, and in this segment we are going to talk about how to kill bamboo. Now if you buy a older home or you live in a neighborhood where there is bamboo planted, and it has just taken over the hood. You know what I mean you want to kill it, you want to get rid of it as soon as possible, because it is just killing everything. It's taken over the houses, the gardens, the street, the sidewalks it is just vicious. But there is no easy way to kill bamboo. That is the issue. Now bamboo is related to grass, just the normal grass that is in your lawn. So long as it is getting some sun, some water, some light it will grow, and it doesn't really need a lot of water to grow. It will grow almost in the desert by itself. There are a few tips that I can tell you on how to kill it. Now you think if you whack the bamboo down to the ground you've killed it you haven't. It is the roots that are going to keep grown. They love to be whacked down. The more you whack them down the more they grow. So the only way to kill it is to remove every bit of root. Now you can cover it with black plastic, you can cover it with wood, you can cover it with anything for up to a year, and sometimes that will kill it in the end. Newspapers, whack it down put newspapers over the top sometimes that will work. But bamboo grows from seed as well so as soon as you remove all of that sometimes it will still come right back from the seed. So it is really there is no easy way to kill it. You have got to realize there is two types of bamboos. There is the clumping bamboo that is much clumpier it doesn't become as invasive, and those once you get the roots out they are much easier to remove, and they are not as invasive. They are not quite the problem. It is these clumping bamboos that really take over. Always put them in containers, and always try to never let them take over an area. If it is a smaller area boiling water works. You can boil some water, put it on that area a little bit at a time, and can try to kill them that way. But really outside of digging them out or covering them up with cement, with black plastic, with a raised flower bed with metal mesh underneath there is really no easy way to kill the bamboo with out removing every little piece of it.