Fargesia rufa

Hi there

New here and largely new to gardening. I've bought a fargesia rufa to add a bit of life to a patio in my new house. I've been watering it regularly (reading online making sure it's drained and not waterlogged.

Was just wondering about what seem to be dead stems interspersed in the green stems/leaves and whether that's an unhealthy plant or fairly standard. From checking other threads it seems some feed would be a good idea - is there a specific feed that this sort of plant can benefit from?

Cheers
Richard

 

I think your gonna need a bigger pot.

I'd repot into something bigger and cut back to the base all the dead stuff.

 

When you repot, use a soil based compost like John Innes no 3 with a few handfuls of grit to aid drainage. The width of the pot is important as the roots grow outwards to produce new canes. I’d remove all the spindly, brown, leafless canes to tidy it up. New canes will start to form next year in late April/early May. In the meantime, a handful of blood, fish and bone will help your bamboo get established. Feed again in March before the new canes start to appear. Bamboo will be happy in a container for a couple of years but ideally will be better placed in the ground if you have space. Fargesias are clumping bamboos so will not send out runners and become invasive. Pot feet or similar are also better than a saucer for drainage once the rain returns .

 

Thank you both! I will re-repot and follow your instructions! At the moment it's a 25cm diameter pot - go out to, what, maybe 40cm?

 

Sounds good to me.

 

That will be fine @richsdixon. One other tip, if you see the leaves start to curl inwards, that’s a sign that it needs watering. It will also need more water if it’s hot, sunny or windy.

 

Just wanted to follow up on this - hopefully someone will see the thread. So I repotted the Fargesia Rufa - I actually did it twice! - and I've noticed that since the weather has turned that the soil is seemingly waterlogged. I brought the fargesia inside but there seemed to be number of flies on it so I put it outside for a while but I've got it back inside again. It looks fairly sorry with a number of yellow leaves. Might this be from the waterlogged soil. Am hoping keeping it inside and drying it out might help. Any thoughts? The one thing that I missed in the above was adding a "few handfuls of grit to aid drainage" - is it particularly easy to do it "retrospectively" be repotting again with grit?

 

Both waterlogging and dehydration can cause those symptoms. The only way to improve drainage now by adding grit is to remove the plant from the pot, take off as much compost from the roots as you can and repot with added grit. Make sure that your pot can drain adequately by removing the saucer and replacing it with pot feet or similar to raise it off the ground. It needs to be outdoors and will fare much better either in the ground or a larger, wider planter.

 

I would repot in a third to half grit. In dry conditions it's easy to add water whereas if too wet it's not easy to remove water.

 

I would also consider that we are coming into winter and they do shed a lot of leaves naturally.