cleaning up a bamboo grove, culling, taking divisions; phyllostachys parvifolia timber running bamboo

This year my phyllostachys parvifolia has gone from 4-5ft shoots of last year up to 7-12 footers, and it spread out pretty good producing around 45 new shoots. It looked a bit messy with the new shoots leafing out and the old culms at the bottom, blocking the view of the culms. I ended up culling all the old culms and a few of the tiny culms from this year, and also took around 15 divisions.

Here's the grove before the clean up.

I first got some divisions. Here are some of them. They all leaf curled to some extent, but I try to keep as much rhizome and original soil on as possible so most of them have recovered fully after a day. The divisions from old culms are suffering probably because they got all the energy sucked out of them already after the production of new culms.

After taking some divisions and culling out the old culms, the bamboo finally looks like true bamboo, and there are 31 culms left which should be more than enough for an upsize next year. Here's how it looks.

I added some manure, then watered it for about 10 minutes to hopefully get it to restore it's energy. The largest culms this year are around 1 inch in diameter so I'm hoping for at least 1.5 inchers next year.

Here's the finished product. It will look complete once the culms fully leaf out and there are still many years in the growing season to produce rhizomes and large shoot buds for hopefully an even stronger shooting season next year. Maybe they'll get taller than the spruce trees on the west side of the grove.