It is best, in my opinion, to buy from a bamboo nursery since I've seen bamboo for sale at Home Depot among other places, and it was mislabeled. You would not want to buy a running bamboo by accident. Yes, Bambusas are clumping bamboos. You need to decide on how much room the plant will have and how large of a plant you want. Bambusas height range is from 3 feet to over 70 feet. Here, B. oldhamii grows to over 40 feet, but it is very erect/upright, so it does not need a lot of space. Here is a pic of some oldhamii I had in 14 inch pots and the boo grew to over 22 feet. This is a pic of a hammock in between two oldhamii plants in my yard. The culms get just over 4 inches thick. Another tall Bambusa, and probably the most cold hardy, is B. textilis of which there are smaller varieties also. In my yard, with vegetation competing for sunlight, B. textilis gets to about 45 feet but in the pic below where it is out in the open, it grows to about 30 feet max. This was taken during the drought but I did give it some extra water. Runners will not die in a drought, no matter how severe. Most clumpers will survive also, but die back. It depends on the type of soil you have the bamboo in as to how hard a drought is on the plant. Sunburst Bamboo is a smaller but very pretty bamboo but is still rare and can be kind of expensive. Look into Bambusa eutuldoides 'Viridivittata' and Bambusa pervariabilis 'Viridistriatus'...two of my favourites for colour, striped leaves and are quite cold hardy. Click on the link below and scroll down to look at the Bambusas. It will help you narrow down which bamboos you like. To see pics, you can click on the second website. Scroll down to the bottom of the page and look for the bamboo of your choice and click on it to see several pictures. Bamboo Click Here For Pics. Feel free to ask more questions. Kt

I am so sorry to hear that chilli thrips are in California. As some of you may remember I discovered them in my garden in October of 2012 and wrote about it on the Texas Garden Web here. There are pictures of what the damage looks like on roses and if you scroll down about 2/3 there are pictures of other plants with chilli thrips damage. There are also several links to more information. Some still work and some do not. The Houston Rose Society link still works and has several pages of information and photos. Chilli thrips can be ID'd with a 10 power jeweler's loupe. I described how in these two paragraphs. "I took several sheets of white paper, made a slight funnel with them, held them under a leaf and tapped it. Along with some teeny dust size black dots of what I think was frass I saw one tiny yellow dot moving. It was less than the size of period at the end of this sentence. I focused on it using a 10X jewelers loupe and the tiny insect, 1/10 the size of a flower thrips came into view. It was unmistakable a chilli thrips, had the little lines on it and everything. And then it flew away in front my of very eyes (to use an old expression). I then took the paper to an opened rose that had the brown streaks, tapped it, out dropped two little spiders which quickly ran off the paper. Were they eating the chilli thrips? I don't know. But remaining on the paper were four tiny yellow dots that were moving. Putting the loop on them I could see they were the immature forms of chilli thrips; no wings." I also ID'd them on several other type of plants using that method. I knew a young gardener who was willing to treat the roses with insecticides. I was NOT willing. So he came and dug up about 50 mature roses and I redesigned the whole garden. I had enjoyed roses for about 30 years and I was ready for something else requiring less care so it was no big deal. As fate would have it, we've had some colder winters and I haven't seen evidence of chilli thrips damage on the other plants since, and there were quite a few. Since I don't spray maybe a chilli thrips predator showed up? Who knows why they went away -- in my garden anyway. I haven't kept up with what's going on with the San Antonio Rose Society member gardens, but about half their members were already spraying for them when I discovered the damage on my roses. I wish you all the best. These things have a way of working themselves out and are often not as bad as we thought they would be. That was the case for my garden.

I would be interested in knowing as well. I am in N E FL and I am surprised that chili thrips havent showed up here yet. They are rampant in S FL and we are getting into the 100F here in the summers now and having warmer winters without much frost so I know they are coming lol. One thing I've noticed that loves to eat the regular thrips is our native little green tree frogs. As soon as thrips show up in the spring, I will soon see the little frogs start hanging out in the flower blossoms gobbling up thrips. These frogs are endangered here in FL now due to invasion of the Cuban Tree frogs that gobble up the green tree frogs, native lizards etc. I wonder if these tree frogs could b used in other places like Calif to control thrips. They do a great job here. I had these frogs in our yard when I lived in Louisiana so hopefully the Cuban tree frogs arent going eat all them up in LA.

I have never defoliated before while pruning until this year. I can really see how that one step can make a big difference. Removing the bugs' comfy baby making areas will force them elsewhere. I'm excited about how all my plants are going to burst forth with new growth at the same time now too and flush in unison (or close to it). It was a lot of extra work, but I can see how a manual control like removing leaves can really help with thrips. Spraying horticultural oil will hopefully help too. The aphids are already appearing and there is something that looks kind of thrip-ish, but I just don't have the time to go out with a magnifying glass or loupes to check out what it actually is. I will be putting out some blue gloves coated in oil soon and whatever is caught on those I will send to the UC master gardeners so they can identify if they're chili thrips since they requested it. The bees were out too today. They have claimed my yard as their own, along with the hummingbirds. I haven't been out there as often lately since it's been raining... so they aren't used to me being out there anymore and I was not welcome today. They were pissed at me and trying to chase me out. The hummingbirds dive bombed me and I could almost hear this one bee screaming at me to get out of his yard. Little do they know that I am the one that created this little habitat for them! At least I know they like it!