I have bamboo in my garden in Canada. It was given to me by my neighbour who has grown the same stand of bamboo for 20 years. No care is necessary... no mulching, covering etc. It grows to 12' to 14' each year. Has long green leaves & it turns a pretty beige color in the winter, with feathery seed heads at the top.. doesn't flower till late september. We have minus 35 C winters here & it never bothers this bamboo. I would love to get more but don't know the name...it looks a bit like Pseudosasa Japonica, but I'm not sure

Poaky, I have some clumpers and some runners. You really betta be prepared to work if you plant any runner. Of the clumpers, we grow Fargesia rufa"green panda bamboo". It forms a tense grove if given some protections from Summer and Winter sun here in NJ/Zone 7. They were expensive initially, but each year I divided the clumps and extended the wall of bamboo. It is completely non-agressive and has 0% dieback in our winter, and is deer proof. So now there is a solid wall of evergreen bamboo on the eastern border of the house with neighbors (about 10 feet tall). I also have some runners in the back but am ever vigilant to keep them in check. This year was a mixed bag. There are openings in the tree canopy (due to previous hurricane damage), so light for bamboo to expand but there's been moderate drought, so they are kept in check. Besides, I have other weeds from HELL that make the bamboo look like a dream come true! It's all about balance with the running bamboo. They can be very aggressive given good growing conditions and a lack of vigilance. My intent is to plant more TREES in the back and create more shade to curtail (but not eliminate the running bamboo), and my new NEMESIS..., Scottish Thistle (The true weed from HELL). We got rid of a grove of running bamboo only to have this evil plant come out of nowhere to colonize. It's got 6-8 foot stems covered in thorns that penetrate my gardening gloves. I thought the bamboo was bad until I inherited this god awful weed. Now, I am rooting for the running bamboo!!

After the bath, a couple shriveled, clearly not liking it. But it's definitely satisfying to see white dots floating in the water. I left them out to dry and started to pick more stubborn bugs from some of my plants. Most of them were motionless, so I assumed the soap bath did the trick. So I left the rest alone. Nuked all the soil of new pots with boiling water, followed by a 4 minute cook off in the microwave. I set them off to dry for a few days, and I tried to pot them up last night. And guess what? The mealies SURVIVE!! Except for those that I had picked on, the rest still had tiny bugs crawling in them. You can call them eggs, larvae whatever, I got fed up. Took out my tub of rubbing Alcohol dunk half a containerful with more dish soap, and yanked everything into the concoction. Rinsed them into another tub of water, and set them off to dry again. This time I inspected every single one. Miraculously, no white stuff or survivors. I'm guessing it worked. The poor remaining plantlets all don't look good. I guess only time will tell if these all can be saved. Will continue to update... Oh, and I also found infestations on my new jades too, thankfully I caught the spread and am now containing it, or at least am trying to..

Hmmm, strange indeed monsteraston. I am west of you and all my macs/serratas/oakleafs/paniculatas have leafed out. Granted, some are leafing out from the base/crown and the panics have tiny leaves (1/2 to 1") but still. Historically, paniculatas and arborescens have always been slow to leaf for me here (compared to the macs, which began to leaf out earlier in February). Make notes in a wall calendar from one year to the next so you can get a good feel what is normal but I am seeing more instances of early leaf out than in prior years, especially with the macs. I am also noticing -this year- some winter damage on selected shrubs that face north and that are in unprotected locations. Probably due to the mild weather that was followed by cold lows in Jan 5-8. That could result in growth from the crown and dried out dead stems from any of those types of hydrangeas. Hydrangeas that loose stems that way may take a while longer to produce new stems from the crown but if the roots re ok then they should eventually do that. When cold like January's pops up, I check my mulch levels and try to provide water before the cold period arrives but, even though I did so, the shrubs on the north side look like they got hit as temps prior to the cold front were so mild and these guys were not "protected" by the house and other things. Macs located there have dried out looking stems with no leaves (at east none so far) but, the plants have leafed out from the crown. Macs in protected locations look normal and are leafing out. Paniculatas like my Little Lime are leafing out. Oakleafs too. FYI - if no stems leaf out on a shrub by mid May and the plant does not generate new stems either then the whole plant did not make it. For now, I would maintain the soil as evenly moist as you can and keep them well mulched. I usually fertilize at the end of the month since that would be about two weeks after March 13, our average date of last freeze. If they do not leaf out by May then they did not make it. Prune the dried out stems then. I would hope that the roots did make it though as they usually do. If you cannot wait until May, you can lightly scratch a stem that has not leafed out to see if you see 'green'. If you see green, the roots are alive; but the stem with green may or may not leaf out. Hard to tell if it will as sometimes they leaf out and other times they do not even though they are green when I check. Years ago, I had one arborescens that did not make it due to issues with the drip irrigation one year. It did not come back and I assumed it was lack of water during the winter as I did not notice that there was a problem until some camellias started browning their leaves in Feb-March. So it pays to water them during dry winters (but seldom, maybe every 2-3 weeks or when the soil feels dry).