My biggest concern would be who would control the 'pesty' trees when you're gone?
Many invasive plants have berries that birds love and they could be a reservoir of pest trees just waiting to invade uncontrolled areas.
As far as I know, bamboo (I'm talking clumping here, I'd never suggest planting running bamboo...) is waaay too hard on a chipper. I imagine it would also shred into really sharp, dangerous shards.

An idea not thought out fully.

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California Sycamores are supposed to be fast growing and that would be a native. Natives will require less maintenance and support native wildlife.

Many bamboos send out runners and become difficult to contain. You're inviting an invasive to take over.

Careful of what you wish for.

to sense
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There are trees specifically planted for coppicing - fast growers which can be cut often. Search for species of coppice trees in your climate. Permaculture folks often plant coppice trees for a steady supply of branches, etc. They are not necessarily invasive but are fast growers. Search the term and see what you find for your area!

You should want to make your land more valuable and useful, not fill it with future problems... Likely to continue growing after being "cut down." Stumps. Lowering your property value. Growing a forest of cuttings in your "mulch?" Agree that one should make lemonade out of lemons, but be mindful of the potential for creating more problems. If you already have "garbage plants" growing, they'll likely continue to provide you with compost fodder and/or mulch without any encouragement on your part. What about some type of cover-cropping that improves your soil that you harvest to compost and/or mulch? From what I can tell of your mindset from your post, you might find some useful ideas for your land by investigating permaculture.

This book could spark your imagination to do great things, Redesigning the American Lawn:
A Search for Environmental Harmony.

The hard part would be the roots in the soil. Pest trees often have roots that take over the soil. Digging it out may require
Heavy equipment
iPad auto
Corrections sorry
From ipad

as was mentioned in the video and numerous times on this forum... there should be plenty of resources for wood chips in your area.

In my mind, a better use for your land would be giving landscaping and tree services free access to dump their trimmings on your property. You could have a never ending supply of compost for you and your neighbors.

Scotty66.
There are quite a number of tree companies etc. in my area and I have been getting truck loads in the past few years. This season is different, I have been calling the same companies for the past 7 months or so and yet to receive anything. Apparently they are in great demand now with long waiting list.

Batya,
coppicing sounded like a great idea, I have never heard of it until your post. THANK YOU. Searching for fast growing tree for coppicing led me to Scouler Willow (Salix scouleriana), a native of western USA.

According to the above study by Innovative Tree Farming of Western Institute for Study of the Environment Colloquium:

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The best shrub for Pacific Northwest tree farmers to grow is Scouler willow. Taxonomists have identified over 50 species, subspecies, and varieties of willow in our region. Scouler willow is the most common, but many other native willows are excellent rod producers. Scouler willows can grow into small trees, but coppicing keeps them short and manageable.

Willows are easy to establish. Winter-cut branch tips or sucker shoots will take root if merely stuck in soil. Willows have an abundance of auxins, the plant hormones used in commercial rooting formulations. In fall, after the willows are well-established, growers cut them off a few inches above ground-level. In the following spring the root crown (coppice stool) will sprout new rods. Growers harvest the rods the in fall, and the cycle repeats.

Growers sell fresh willow rods to florists, or steamed, peeled, and dried rods to craft stores. Craft willow rods are sold by weight; current prices are over $5 per pound. An acre can produce 4 to 5 tons of willows rods every year, and willow farmers can produce annual crops worth over $40,000 per acre in gross sales. Market demand is high, and most of the willow rod supply currently sold in the U.S. is imported from Great Britain. Willow offers enormous profit-making opportunities to innovative tree farmers.

Willows also have catkins that are favored by florists.
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So the new shoots from the cippice stool can be harvested yearly. Not only to be chopped up for mulching but has commercial value too.

Excellent! Glad I could help. GardenWeb and the folks here in all the forums have taught me and encouraged me for years. You never know when you'll learn something that changes your whole perspective. Welcome and happy coppicing!

Willow is very good in that it grows fast and contains a natural rooting stimulant. But if you have nematodes, the kind of fungus that kills nematodes does not grow well on such soft wood. It requires slow growing hardwood like oak, maple, walnut, cherry, etc. I try to grow a mix so I have a little of each. Then I can partially decompose them and mix them into my soil to not only provide bio feed but also to help kill nematodes.

Here is a link that might be useful: Garden For Nutrition

Hey greenegarden,

Does pine contain enough nematode killing fungus? I must say that I am learning so much on gardenweb.

You guys rocks.

I'm so grateful you've been talked out of bamboo! A person across the street from us planted bamboo and now has had to re-pave a neighbors driveway. When the neighbor's house went up for sale, it lost a lot of value because bamboo is all the way up to the edge of their yard, and the only way to stop it is with poison. So it's a dead zone in the neighbor's yard. The person who planted it no longer has a back yard, just a bamboo jungle. And it's coming to the front.

We're directly across the street. Makes me kinda glad we're moving...I won't be there to see my yard and garden overtaken sometime in the near future! I hope it doesn't lower OUR sale price.

Downright,

Bamboo can be pest, although they look great and grow fast. Not sure how effective the plastic bamboo barriers are in preventing the runners. I am glad to be talked out of considering bamboo too.

"The only way to stop it is with poison". The person who planted it is ignorant and irresponsible, and the person that poisoned it is ignorant and irresponsible. It's easy to get rid of, but it's mostly easier for people to be dramatic becuase it gets other people's attention. Once an owner lets his bamboo get out of control, it should be totally cut down. One hundred percent. Then watered, fertilized, allowed to shoot, and cut down again. Ya starve it by forcing it to use up all of it's stored carbohydrates and it dies off. To contain it, the rhizomes are very shallow, you sever them with a flat shovel all the way around the predetermined perimeter once or twice a year. Errant rhizomes die off that you cut. I grow twenty two species on three propeties, nobody here should be providing information that misleads and doesn't address the real issue- ignorance and irresponsibility... as Mackel peacefully types, from the grove...

Mackel

Mackel,

Would trenching be as effective plastic barriers? If one digs a 2 ft deep and 2 ft wide trench around the bamboo, and does the annual cutting off of wandering rhizomes. Would that contain the expansion?

I'm all for responsibility and so on, but bamboo can live for much longer than a human.
When we're all composted and our pitiful barriers have disappeared, that bamboo is likely to be continueing it's steady march.
Mackel, what do you think about using bamboo as mulch? I think it would be easy getting the young green poles through a chipper, but leave them a bit long and I imagine things could get pretty hard and splintery...

I cut a bunch of bamboo poles one time and took the trimmings and tried to run them through a 8HP Craftsman chipper shredder. Worst experience I've ever had using that thing. It wasn't the shredder's fault either. Bamboo, even limbs off the main stalks, are just tough and splintery and I don't think they're worth the effort. And these were fairly fresh, not aged for a few weeks.

Bamboo is a heavy self mulcher, more than any tree. The culm sheaths and leaves pile up a little higher each year under the bamboo. So I'm not sure a chipper would be necessary, and the culms themselves might be a little problem in a chipper, because of it's high silicone content.

I have an excess of organic material each year due to the remarkable carbon seqestration of the plant. I give away the culms to artists and craftsmen, or pile it up in a woooded area to let it slowly rot when I clear out old, smaller diameter, or dead culms. About one fourth of the grove is removed each year. This makes it pleasant to walk through.

When bamboo flowers every twenty to one hundred and fifty years, instead of producing viable seed, it often dies out and if it doesn't, it is severely set back for several years. There is no case in one hundred and thirty years in this country, in fact, where it has spread by seed, and and that's over a hundred different species. It's been cultivated so long, it's lost it's ability to spread by seed, at least in the U.S., and it's easier to propagate it vegetatively, though one can order seed it's not legal to import seed so I don't, and it's tricky starting out with seed anyway.

Bamboo doesn't march on forever, unless it's in an artificial environment where trees are intentionally limited, and lawns are created, such as in the city. It outcompetes lawns, being that it's a grass that grows tall. There is a forty year old grove nearby that has spread one quarter of an acre, since it competes for sunlight, it's stopped it's "march", and has settled in and become a part of the "ecology". The rhizomes that peter out are tremendous soil builders, the microflora benefit from the high carbohydrate content, lots of sugars and starch. You can take a poor soil and make it great, simply by planting bamboo and wiping it out later as described earlier. Like no other plant including nitrogen fixing legumes.

It has no allelopathic properties, and trees and bamboo get along well and can mutually benefit each other. The tree supplies some shade, the bamboo supplies mulch for the tree. It is a symbiotic, rather than a parasitical, relationship. It's a forest plant for heavens's sake, it's in the plant's interests not to destroy it's natrual environment.

There are three methods of controlling bamboo, trenching, barriers, or mowing a twenty foot wide circle around the grove each year.