Bamboo planting, part 1

With the site cleared of the old bamboo, it was ready to plant the "new" one. This wasn't a case of grabbing the black nursery pot that contained the new plant though.

I would be moving this bamboo that has been growing in this box for a few years. I had planned it out carefully, but was still concerned that I might have overlooked some important detail.

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Enough planning, time for action!

Step one was to remove the outer decoration that made the box appear to be level. Remember when I did that project? (I can't believe it was 4 years ago!)

Next, I removed the actual box walls:

Stepping back for a moment to survey the progress:

Next came the plastic that kept the soil from touching the wood:

With the sides off I was a bit concerned, as I expected to see rhizomes up against the walls, filling the "pot" so to speak. I know that this box was the most neglected of my boxed bamboos, and hopefully that's the reason that it's not done too well.

Anyway, the next step was to pry the rootball up...

...and onto the "sled":

(That's a reverse angle shot)

My idea was to use this "sled" along a "track" -- actually just a board on which lengths of pipe would act as rollers.

This worked very well!

Of course that's because the destination was slightly downhill, and things on rollers love going downhill, even when they weigh 200 lbs (90 kg) or more!

The sled actually rolled too far at one point, and it was not easy getting it back onto the track.

While this was going quite well, I wished I had a helper -- going back and getting the rollers from the back and moving them back to the front was getting tedious.

After a while I got the plant into the new hole:

Look at that board bend! The hole was not too deep as I really wanted this plant to be growing in a mound.

Here it is all planted, viewed from the south (my neighbor's yard):

And from my yard:

Final step was water, and lots of it!

Is it my imagination, or does the plant already look happier than it has been for years?

You really can't the plant from elsewhere in the yard now, but its previous home...

...is a bit of a worksite now. (Remember that there is a base of paver stones under that soil -- that's how I kept the plant from escaping the box, at least in theory)

Looking at the timestamps of the photos I took of the process, I spent just about three hours unboxing this, moving it, and replanting.

I knew it wasn't going to be easy!

As it turns out though, this was the easiest of the three. More on that soon.

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