Hi everyone. I bought Phyllostachys aurea in a 12-inch container last August and put it on my balcony/roof garden. It's quite exposed with an open field just west of the balcony, and it's on the 4th floor facing north. I put the bamboo at the east end of the balcony as winter came and crowded most of my other containers together with it. It seemed to be doing fine until about a month ago when I noticed a lot of dry, white edges on the foliage. I wasn't watching it closely every day, so I'm guessing at the time the leaves started looking damaged. Since we had a fairly mild winter - with the only real cold being a few days in November(?) - I'm wondering what's happened to my plant. The soil is moist and has been since the fall. As I said, the area is quite exposed to our prevailing southwesterlies and there have been a few gales roaring through in the past few months. So I'm wondering is the damage from cold? alternate warm days with cold nights? or wind? I'm including a couple of photos of the leaf damage. Can someone tell me what's happened here.
In Vancouver (BC) I was told that the temperature dropped to about -8C for a couple of days in mid-January as well. Maybe that's when your plant got burned.
Ah, yes, looking back I see that the temperature ranged from +6 to -5 degrees on Jan. 20th. In fact the week of Jan. 15th had a number of low nights. I wonder if that's what did it - that's what "burn" looks like, huh?
Golden bamboo is not hardy enough to leave sitting out in a pot during Arctic weather. With all plants in pots the hardiness is significantly less than in the ground. For this area one of the more hardy Fargesia is what I would try outdoors in a pot, through the winter.
Well, I wish I'd known that before I bought it. From what I read, it sounded like it was hardy enough.
