[QUOTE=justwannano]
I just found a pretty good looking fishing place and I’m trying to figure a good way to fish it. Its a slough off the Iowa river about 10 miles from its mouth in the mississippi.
Anyway there is no way to put my boat in that slough so i was thinking of fishing brush piles near shore with a long fishing pole.
[/QUOTE]
Now you’re talking my language! For a few dollars more than the bamboo, you can get yourself a telescopic fiberglass crappie rod in lengths up to 20 feet. Fix it up with some nice braided superline (say 4lb diameter with 10lb test strength) and you should be able to horse all sorts of finned friends out of those brush piles. Just keep off the bottom so a big cat or carp doesn’t tear your rig to shreds.
[QUOTE=ZipperJJ]
Oddly enough I have a bamboo fact sheet right here (my uncle grows it, here in NE Ohio. No idea what variety)
The sheet lists these varieties as “hardy clumpers (10-15 feet tall)”:
Fargesia Nitida (to -20 degrees F)
Fargesia Muriale (to -20 degrees F)
Fargesia Dracocephala (to -10 degrees F)
Chusquea (to 0 degrees F)
Fargesia Rufa (just says zones 7-10)
The sheet is, I think, from a catalog from www.raintreenursery.com
Let me warn you that while bamboo will grow up north here, you MUST take precautions to be sure it doesn’t spread too far. You need to use an underground barrier (google bamboo barrier) if you are planting, say, next to a neighbor’s fence. It will spread and your neighbors will want to kill you (cite: my uncle’s neighbors)
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All of the bamboos you mention are so called “clumping” bamboos and are not particulary invasive (as opposed to the “running” bamboos that are extremely invasive).
I saw some bamboo bed sheet packages at my local Target store and was curious about how they stacked up against cotton or linen bed sheets. Are there any Dopers who have these bamboo sheets and can testify to their advantages?
[QUOTE=Monty]
Here in South Korea, you can see scaffolding on buildings under construction. Those scaffoldings are made of one of the following:
[ol][li]Bamboo[/li][li]Bamboo and steel[/li][li]Steel[/ol][/li]I see mostly the first type, followed by a more than incidental number of the second. I almost never see the third type.
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Given the rising cost of structural grade pine I’m surprised that there’s not more use in composite bamboo members for light construction. Not ony is it a stiff, strong material (and from what I can tell, much less prone to splitting or cracking than kiln-dried pine) but it’s grows faster and is less prone to parasitism. I think it would make a great building material, both for structural use and as partition medium (my hatred of gypsum sheetrock notwithstanding) and in “whole” form, at least a reasonable insulator.
