August 14, 2005
BAMBOO
I likes me some bamboo. God's own privet hedge. Once you have a nice thicket of bamboo going neither man nor beast can penetrate it. Even hyenas and jackals have to go down the street, take the detour.
I've been reluctant to plant any, however, because once you let bamboo get away from you, you are fucked. I know from experience. My parents had plenty as privacy hedge on Wilmington Island, and I spent many a Saturday whacking that shit like a damned Filipino, machete in hand, just to produce a draw, a tie. Insidious stuff.
Still and all, if I had bamboo I could steal me a couple of pandas, and ensure a ready food supply. I like pandas, and I resent the hell out of the fact there are only like fifty of them left, and so people get all upset when you try to pilfer a pair for personal amusement. I think I could raise a pair better than the National Zoo, where they can't even make them discharge offspring on a regular basis, because they are so busy poking and prodding the poor things.
Me? I'd feed them bamboo shoots and Viagra, and have a very lucrative side business in black market panda cubs.
There is a place on Highway 17, south of Savannah, near Richmond Hill, called the Bamboo Farm. Owned by the feddul guvmint since, like, the 1930's. Razor wired and cinched down. Rumour had it in the early '70's that the Feds were growing King Hell reefer there, so that when the moratorium on weed was relaxed the government could go into the drug business and clean house.
I don't know about that, and maybe now you can tour that facility and pick sweet bud from your car window. But I DO know those fuckers grow some bamboo. They grow a shitload of bamboo. And that alone is worthy of my praise. The only use of my tax dollars I can think of that I heartily approve of. Well, that and the whacking of Islamofascists.
Yeah, I've seen bamboo go wild, and it's not a pretty thing. Sometimes you gotta take out the overburden alltogether to rid yourself of it. I've considered trying to plant some here, but near chicago I don't know how well it would weather the winters.
Posted by: og at August 14, 2005 4:37 PMI likes me a good Bong.
Posted by: Yabu at August 14, 2005 5:00 PMYabu: made me many a bamboo bong. Used to keep a red candle in my glove compartment to seal the fitting where the bowl tube met the bong. Yup.
Posted by: Velociman at August 14, 2005 5:58 PMSo...we have more than the .38 in common. Dangerous, I say...
Posted by: Yabu at August 14, 2005 7:14 PMI can see it now...the sign outside the VelociPlantation..."Beware of panda".
Dude, that would rock.
Posted by: zonker at August 14, 2005 8:44 PMI would shoot a Panda, just to watch it die.
Posted by: Bane at August 14, 2005 11:56 PMI heard that same rumor about the bamboo farm. I was tempted several times to try to sneak in there to see if they had reefer growing.
I never did. The bamboo was too thick and I could buy reefer on the street.
Posted by: Acidman at August 15, 2005 12:57 AMRemember the Bamboo wall at the triple X, on Victory Drive?
Posted by: Catfish at August 15, 2005 1:57 AMI know a guy in Oregon who has a bamboo farm (rumor has it, he grows *other* things too).....anyway, he told me that there are several different kinds of bamboo. Some will grow and grow and grow until they take over the earth, but there are other varieties that just grow in small limited clumps.
That's my bit of trivia for the day.
Posted by: Dogsdontpurr at August 15, 2005 3:18 AMBamboo is a great cover for growing, umm, hemp...I make rope every day. I wish I could figure out who's been taking my rope... I think it might be the damn rats. sumbitches. I never said that, I think.. Murry
Posted by: Murry at August 15, 2005 7:03 AMIn my backyard,I have a privacy fence, then I planted bamboo next to that, so my entire backyard is enclosed.
I love it, keeps the neighbors a little crazy but hey, as my Grandma used to say, a little aggravation will make you live longer.
I luvs me bamboo.
Posted by: BeeBee at August 15, 2005 7:27 AMThat bamboo shit is insidious. When I was a kid I meandered over to the chinaman's next door who was growing a species of smallish bamboo - I suppose in the bamboo world it's the kind whose lunch money was regularly stolen by the bigger bamboo - and planted one cluster in the woods behind my mom's house.
Now that shit is everywhere, and new growths pop up every May about 40 feet from the last cluster. How can you kill that shit? There's gotta be some targeted herbicide which kills that lateral-root propogating shit. At least it provides the required modicum of 8-foot lengths I need to make switches every year.
Posted by: maui wowie at August 15, 2005 2:45 PMmaui wowie: Agent Orange...
Posted by: Christina at August 15, 2005 4:18 PMA fed farm for bamboo? Isn't that kinda like a fed farm for growing kudzu? I've been fighting the bamboo in my backyard here in NoCal with no luck. I suggest container gardening for those who wish to cultivate it.
Posted by: Trish at August 16, 2005 12:50 AM