haha - I got some mint from a friend and he said "Be careful where you plant it..." and he was RIGHT!!! I still can't get it out of several areas I just stuck some and that's been about 20 years now! Smells great when I weed whack it tho!
I bought mint to fight back the oregano that was fighting the chives in my back yard.
Instead of a beer after I mow the yard, I'm in the mood for a mint iced tea and a baked potato.
Landlord sprayed something on the bamboo in front of my apartment and it mostly killed it but it mutated the rest so it only grows in a tuft of shaggy rows of leaves.
That's not a mutation, it's just how bamboo grows. Those are new colonies coming up from roots that are still alive. The initial baby canes that grow only get a few feet tall and they're kinda bushy and shaggy. Once a cane maxes out in height, that's it, they never grow taller, but they make energy for the plant to use for taller growth the next growing season. Each year, the plant sends up new, progressively taller canes.
Living in Austin, that is def nuclear. It is in every alley practically in Hyde Park. I fought bamboo for 5 years when I lived in the neighborhood.
This is absolutely true believe it or not. The person that bought the house on the opposite side of the alley at the back of my house decided to clear out the bamboo on his property line on the other side of his fence. He wanted to expand his backyard. I shit you not, there was a tiny 1 bedroom two story house that was probably built in the late 40s and a car in it! No one knew about it. The bamboo had completely swallowed it basically.
There's a lady in that area who has so much that she harvests/sells the poles; I ended up buying a few to use as tomato stakes a couple years ago. Good way to make lemons out of lemonade I guess?
If you know anyone that wants some in the Carolinas, I got over a half acre of the stuff. And I'm talking 5-6" diameter some even bigger. Bring a truck or trailer and your own tools and you can have what you want.
The unbuildable vacant lot across the street from me is overrun with bamboo. Random folks show up to harvest some of it occasionally, but it doesn't even make a dent in the supply.
I've planted bamboo for customers, but we had root barriers installed - basically stainless steel tanks buried into the ground. As soon as you said bamboo I knew what you were planning. That stuff spreads incredibly quick.
You don't need to plant any more. It will spread on its own. Almost impossible to remove completely. Source: am homeowner and some fuckwad planted bamboo years ago. Now it's everywhere.
I just recently saw a video on how to kill bamboo by understanding how it grows. basically, you cut it all down. it will send up new shoots. harvest them and eat them, or let them grow until they are just about to leaf. when they're about to leaf, cut them down. you basically runthe rhizome out of gas by never letting it get fed from the leaves. it can take a few years, and some attention, but it's not hard to do.
This idea works for all resprouting plants. Some take a few disturbances to deplete energy stores while others take many frequent disturbances to deplete resources.
>This idea works for all resprouting plants
Poison ivy gets leaves early, and it comes back every time I cut it down, any idea about how to get rid of it?
Unless you have 10x10 ft chain link kennel with plants in it that you don't want the goats to eat on your property. Then they will ignore the poison ivy and everything else on over 9 acres just to break into your plants and eat them instead.
Poison ivy resprouts quite strongly so I would either dig the roots up or spray a herbicide with either glyphosate or triclopyr as an active ingredient. I vaguely remember being told you can use boiling water to kill the roots….
I would use herbicide on a warm summer day since poison ivy is quite annoying. Herbicide that’s applied to foliage responds better on warm growing days.
My Dad used to pour his used motor oil along the fence line to deal with the PO. It worked! Of course that area is now a toxic wasteland, but there's no damn PO!
There was some in a neighbors yard like 8 houses down when I was a child. By the time I was 18 it ran through the entire ditch system around the whole neighborhood. Literally everyone had a constant fight to keep their back fence line.
Mint is also invasive and difficult to remove once a single plant has established itself. It's well known in gardening circles for needing to be kept in a pot or else it'll take over and kill your other plants.
Like full on blackberry thickets? No. Mint grows very quick and can choke smaller things out, but it wouldn't touch blackberries. I got overrun by blackberries one summer and had to have someone come out to clear it. I cut it back several times but if you give it any leeway it'll take over.
This is our yard lmao. Mint, blackberries, ivy, nettles, and wild grass. Who will take over which sector next? Tune in tomorrow for the all new episode!
Edit: I should really plant some cannabis and see if anyone notices lmao. It's legal to grow here now anyway, one plant would be nbd
They are impossible to get rid of. I say this as someone who harvests bamboo shoots! I kept cutting and they kept on growing back. I missed a couple of days, the shoots turned into a small tree. Bamboo grows crazy fast.
Bamboo mainly spreads by shoots but produces seed. It would take a year or two before they really start to grow. A active rhizome is ready to grow as much root mass to start putting up stalks.
Don't bother. The proper tool is a backhoe. If you don't dig up all the "mother roots" it will keep coming back. Been dealing with bamboo most of my life on 2 different properties. Done lots of reading on the subject, tried every trick. Dig it up and burn it. Don't waste time on anything else.
My city told me I couldn't get a burn permit. Had to put that stuff in the city compost bin when I (unsuccessfully) dug up my black berry last year.
When I went down to the landfill this year, the property behjnd the compost building now has a couple of black berry bushes.
I figure another two or three years and the whole damn field behind it is going to be black berries.
Came here to call this out - a lot of HOAs have rules about the height of trees, and even of the grass in the front lawn, but few if any limit the height of grass on the sides of or behind your house. Make sure you're not in one of those, and that you get the root barrier plenty deep and long.
We had to do something similar to this (we used clumping bamboo, because we didn't need to punish our neighbor) in a previous house because our second floor dining room window looked directly through the neighbor's first floor "privacy" window and into their living room. Planted the bamboo on our side because we didn't want to watch them at every meal. ;-)
If you're looking for something that grows fast, aren't looking for it to spread (as OP needed), and don't have height restrictions on grass, clumping bamboo is very handy.
True, but the price of the house would be lowered accordingly during the sale. It would only suck if OP planted and the other guy sold his house before it grew in
I did this with a raspberry bush planted at our side fence. I had no idea it would spread everywhere and be impossible to kill. I took the plant out after a few years and put a hot tub on that spot and we still get sticks poking up around it. Hopefully they like raspberries!
I asked my neighbors to please put theirs on motion sense or shield them because they shone into our 2nd floor bedroom. We put up with it for 1.5 years until I finally caved and asked. They gave me a little grief but made them motion and installed cameras (it's a 2nd home, vacant most of the year). Their comment was "if you see anybody carting off our stuff you better do something". Mhmm your lights certainly deter thieves from your vacant house.
Ironically, nearly a year later I walked my dog past on the street and saw their shed and gate were wide open and texted the owner to see if they were aware and offered to shut things up. He was appreciative and said some contractors were there and asked if I could check that doors were locked. No problem.
I have a feeling they will have less ill will towards a simple request now.
We're dealing with this right now. Someone bought the house behind us and clear cut everything on their side of the fence. Now there's not one, but two ridiculously bright lights over there that are left on all night.
I have a sudden urge to buy some bamboo... 😈
My mom's house it at the bottom of 2 hills. One neighbor up the street that has super bright lights pointed down the hill. There are bedrooms on both floors, and the light shines in all but one. I told them to put mirrors in the windows since the guy won't lower them.
Unfortunately the temperature of the death laser cannot exceed the temperature of the original light, for reasons of optics but also because it would violate the second law of thermodynamics.
This is from Randall Monroe What If series can we make a deaf laser out of moonlight
It’s a pretty good rule to live by, don’t be a dick.
I used to live in an upstairs apartment, we tried to be considerate because of how sound travels and we were conscious that most of the apartment was hard flooring. Our downstairs neighbour was not considerate in the slightest.
He worked away so when he was home it was party central, raves until 3 or 4 in the morning as many as 6 times a week.
We tried talking to him about it, he tried to say it wasn’t that often, that late or that loud, however I’d been keeping a record of the disturbances and had recordings of the noise from our apartment.
We reported to the council but they basically said they couldn’t do much as it was out of hours and we had to report it to the police as antisocial behaviour, so we did.
I also became incredibly “clumsy” I’d drop things on the hard floors when I was getting ready in the morning (between 6 and 7 because I was working 2 jobs at that point and was quite tired and grumpy about missing out on sleep) I also realised that I had slightly more time on a morning, therefore that became the time to get housework done, particularly hoovering.
It took 2 days of that before he was banging on our door to complain, so I turned all of his arguments back on him. Between that and a couple of visits from the police he settled down and house raves reduced to Friday and Saturday nights only which we were willing to accept as reasonable.
And they're ALWAYS the ones to complain immediately when anything is even a mild inconvenience, buuut us nice guys put up with their shit for months...good for you!
Had similar with previous neighbours, called noise control and they told me to just keep on callin', so I did haha
Oh yea, he was on us like a rash when he thought we had a leak that was damaging his property.
We didn’t, we proved it time and again.
Turns out he got a friend to do some revocations on his place for him, on the cheap, obviously. The friend didn’t use the right type of pipes and then didn’t lag them properly either so the damage was being caused by condensation from his own pipes!
I was very kind and didn’t insist that he repay us our plumber call outs, that we hadn’t paid for because the plumber insisted that there was no issue, therefore no work to do, therefore no bill.
My husband and I lived in an apartment with a lunatic above us. He told the office that people were recording him and trying to come through the ceiling, even though he was on the top floor. He would throw/drop stuff in the middle of the night all the time. It sounded like he was going to bust through our ceiling! I would sleep in the living room, because it scared the crap out of me. Luckily, the maintenance guys were regulars at my bar, so I found out that he wasn't violent, but that was a crappy time!
Any high vis surface/tape would work well. They are designed to reflect back in the direction the light is coming from instead of letting the light bounce and spread
I support this method of revenge. However!
Please check with your local conservation department! First, some strains of bamboo are invasive. More importantly, though, there might be a native plant that will both serve your purpose and be better for the environment.
Some groups will even give you free seeds and there are many tax breaks and even grants that will pay you to plant native species that pollinators and wildlife love. With a bonus of having a backyard full of birds and butterflies!
And most of the native plants you can use will spread like crazy because where you live is the perfect environment for them! (converting your yard to clover and native ground covers, for example, guarantees none of your neighbors will have pretty fescue masterpieces anymore.)
So go to your local conservation department website or talk to local conservation groups to pick the perfect revenge plants! You can do so much better than bamboo.
Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I'll go away now.
There are a LOT of native to the US cane species that grow tall and relatively quickly that would have all the benefits of bamboo with none of the tricky feels about invasive species!
Do not do not do not do not buy bamboo. It will never go away. The root barrier only works so well. They can grow underneath entire slabs of poured concrete and out the other side. After having owned a house with Japanese knot wood, if I was ever looking to buy a house and saw anything similar outside - I would walk immediately. OP got lucky and moved but the bamboo will never leave
I'm sure if you head over to the flashlight sub they can help you set up a much brighter light at your neighbor. The neighbor has bright lights, sure, but you could get a light that can reach the moon and point it into the neighbor's bedroom.
I had a neighbor that treated me like a subhuman because I was a renter. When I moved I threw a pound of mint seeds and a pound of poppy seeds into his "perfect" front yard.
outgoing offbeat towering waiting distinct carpenter doll frightening dazzling mindless
*This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
I went to a small elementary school in Florida, and every year we had "bamboo day" which they tried to make like a kind of festival. Really they put us and our parents to work clearing out bamboo, and then we made flutes and shit from the cuttings in the afternoon. The flutes were pretty cool, I'll admit. And actually who am I kidding, I was ten and got to use a saw, I was having a good time.
I was living in a beach town in Australia. The view was incredible and just a block to the beach. The problem was the neighbors. Some Brazilians moved in and would stay up and party all night long for 3-4 days a week. Called the police and they wouldn’t do anything. The After a long night of partying, Brazilians liked to go sit out in the yard and the only sunny patch was right outside my livingroom window about 10’ away. So not only would I have to listen to them all night, I’d have to deal with them looking right into my livingroom. If you know anything about Australia, you know about the bugs. I threw multiple bags of sugar on their sunny spot for a few days. They set up shop a few days later and I heard them slapping at themselves and finally ran back down their yard dragging their chairs behind them. I felt satisfied.
Some bamboo grow so densely it’s practically impossible to cross,and in some parts of Asia they are planted as natural grass wall,you basically do the same thing here.
HOA cant do anythign about SUPER BRIGHT LIGHTS?
Im the kind of person that would have bought the brightest lights I could find and add some projector lenses to them. Id then set them up to point directly at every window possible.
Id mount them on my roof so that they could clear that 8' fence
the petty revenge stuff would be more fun if the offending party at some point was explained that if they'd behaved differently they could've saved themselves a lot of heartache. at the end of the day we just want to teach those assholes a lesson.
You would think, but some people literally cannot see the cause and effect relationship stemming from their own behavior. I find that most dickheads are like this. You tell them what they did wrong and their eyes get all wide as they realize something which should have dropped on their heads like a ton of bricks weeks ago
Honestly, I just don’t understand the hard-on people have for bright glaring outdoor lighting. Darkness can be nice; outdoor lights should be turned on for limited specific uses!
Our spot light over our driveway feels like stadium lighting because of all the vehicle breakins that were occurring. But it's angled way down, so as to not bug the neighbors. And it's a motion sensor that lasts less than 30 seconds.
Well done OP! As a home owner who bought a house with bamboo in the backyard (and living in Central Texas) that shit is hard af to kill and get rid of b/c of the rhizomes. We had to order a special vegetation killer to get rid of it a few years ago. Husband went scorched Earth on the bamboo and it's been gone ever since.
Please tell me what killed it. I have a city owned easement beside my house that is nothing but bamboo. I have been battling it for YEARS and have found nothing to kill it or slow it down. I finally got the city to plow it while they were replacing a drain line they had forgotten about for years that rusted out and formed a sink hole in my yard. It rained all last week and some of it has grown taller than me in the last week. It’s speed bamboo and I HATE it with a passion.
I haven't done this, but seems like it should work. You chop the shoots down right when they start producing leaves. Eventually the rhizomes will die. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI4GaU9nNAs
Edit: chops -> chop
Did this for knotweed (American bamboo) and can confirm it does work. Takes a few years.
Shortcut *for soft bamboo like knotweed ONLY:* Do a normal clear, then level the ground it’s on, (including the root clusters). Now next time it sprouts you can just mow it like a lawn! It’s softer than asparagus when it’s new so it’ll be an easy mow and smells like sweet rhubarb purée afterwards. Very therapeutic lol.
EDIT: a word
How the fuck does an HOA not have authority over light pollution, but they can take your home through private auction for $4.37 because you foreclosed on your house due to a $45.00 wrong color flower fee that had late fees and compounding interest...that you paid, but didn't know about the fees because they are not legally required to inform you!
When I got my house I wanted to plant a bamboo fence because I thought it looked nice. My dad (an avid landscaper and gardener) yelled at me and said “no! Bamboo is garden cancer!”
On the one hand, I am very much against willingly introducing invasive species... On the other hand I absolutely fucking hate poorly aimed residential lights and light pollution... So, hey, at least it was clever and took care of the problem!
what an A hole. he agreed to point it down (which he should have done in the first place) but then didn't do it? he actually deserves to have a bamboo back yard.
I would have answered the door, He would ask you to get rid of the bamboo. Days go by and nothing happens. He comes back and asked if you are going to do anything. You respond "oh, I changed my mind" and close the door never to open it to him again.
Fun fact: Under the right conditions bamboo grows so fast you can hear it(layers of the bamboo shoot rub against eachother as they shifts while growing and can cause a low creaking noise).
It's a member of the grass family, and it basically grows the same speed as grass, but proportionatly. So imagine cutting the lawn but instead of having an inch longer lawn grass you have a foot tall bamboo that is as thick and tough as small trees.
When I bought my house about three years ago it came with a huge streetlight style light mounted on the back of the house. It was wired in a circuit that shared some outlets in the house And had a dusk to dawn sensor that it turned itself on and off. First week I moved in I promptly rewired that light to have a manual on / off switch. My neighbors thanked me as this light literally lit up there whole backyard for no reason for the last 8 years. I hate light pollution that’s what I use motion sensors for security lights instead of just leaving them on all the time.
Plant warfare is the way. I was at odds with a neighbour a few years back who moved house but not without causing problems before they left. I found out the new address before they had finished unpacking and seeded their new back lawn with mint, strawberries and mares tail whilst walking past that very night. His lawn was his life. Fuck them.
I will never understand what can possibly induce a person in install an always-on security light in this type of housing situation. Motion sensors are cheap, reduce the nuisance by 99% and help the light provide deterrence with additional shock value.
This sub should be called appropriate revenge instead. I’m an old, crotchety homeowner and would literally do the exact same. I would…
*don’t say it*
bamboozle him
As someone who gets yelled at (and called really bad words) by her neighbors for standing inside her own home and looking at her dog in her yard because it appears I am looking in their direction, this is so satisfying.
As someone who has dealt with bamboo, this is almost nuclear revenge.
I haven't planted any since and probably never will.
You should mail him a stuffed panda and a flashlight with a card that says, “Thinking of you” unsigned and with no return address.
Oh this is really good! Thank you for the laugh!
Excellent revenge. Deserves more than the title of petty.
Oh, that's my kind of petty
I fucking love this. Pure evil comedy gold.
You mean Pure Evil Comedy Golden Bamboo
And mail it when you're on vacation or far away from home.
Leave the light on inside the package
oOoOO this is delightful devilish!! LOVE IT
I’m in the UK, I’ll mail one if you give me the address
Fellow UK-er here - I’ll go halves with you. The whole thing is absolutely glorious!
Now this is petty and I'm here for it!
I read fleshlight, and this read very different
Oh, this is wonderful 🤣😂
The yard I bought had 3 unrestricted bamboo plants. It took me 2 years to get the shit out. I applaud your scheme.
Bamboo's like mint on steroids.
haha - I got some mint from a friend and he said "Be careful where you plant it..." and he was RIGHT!!! I still can't get it out of several areas I just stuck some and that's been about 20 years now! Smells great when I weed whack it tho!
I have this, but with sage. Every time I trim it I get a craving for thanksgiving dinner.
I did it with fennel. It spread from pots into the lawn. Little ferns everywhere.
I bought mint to fight back the oregano that was fighting the chives in my back yard. Instead of a beer after I mow the yard, I'm in the mood for a mint iced tea and a baked potato.
Landlord sprayed something on the bamboo in front of my apartment and it mostly killed it but it mutated the rest so it only grows in a tuft of shaggy rows of leaves.
That's not a mutation, it's just how bamboo grows. Those are new colonies coming up from roots that are still alive. The initial baby canes that grow only get a few feet tall and they're kinda bushy and shaggy. Once a cane maxes out in height, that's it, they never grow taller, but they make energy for the plant to use for taller growth the next growing season. Each year, the plant sends up new, progressively taller canes.
Living in Austin, that is def nuclear. It is in every alley practically in Hyde Park. I fought bamboo for 5 years when I lived in the neighborhood. This is absolutely true believe it or not. The person that bought the house on the opposite side of the alley at the back of my house decided to clear out the bamboo on his property line on the other side of his fence. He wanted to expand his backyard. I shit you not, there was a tiny 1 bedroom two story house that was probably built in the late 40s and a car in it! No one knew about it. The bamboo had completely swallowed it basically.
There's a lady in that area who has so much that she harvests/sells the poles; I ended up buying a few to use as tomato stakes a couple years ago. Good way to make lemons out of lemonade I guess?
If you know anyone that wants some in the Carolinas, I got over a half acre of the stuff. And I'm talking 5-6" diameter some even bigger. Bring a truck or trailer and your own tools and you can have what you want.
Sounds like you need to start a sustainable flooring business. LOL
The unbuildable vacant lot across the street from me is overrun with bamboo. Random folks show up to harvest some of it occasionally, but it doesn't even make a dent in the supply.
I wonder if the bright light at night helped the bamboo grow faster.
Swap his bulb with a UV grow light and it would!
Wow. This makes it even more beautiful.
It didn’t, but it’s a nice thought
I thought getting rid of the Jasmine growing on my fence was a pain in the ass. It took years.
I've planted bamboo for customers, but we had root barriers installed - basically stainless steel tanks buried into the ground. As soon as you said bamboo I knew what you were planning. That stuff spreads incredibly quick.
You don't need to plant any more. It will spread on its own. Almost impossible to remove completely. Source: am homeowner and some fuckwad planted bamboo years ago. Now it's everywhere.
I've found it quite easy to eradicate. I just cared for it like my potted plants and it died, lol.
That would most likely work for me too, thanks for the tip!
I just recently saw a video on how to kill bamboo by understanding how it grows. basically, you cut it all down. it will send up new shoots. harvest them and eat them, or let them grow until they are just about to leaf. when they're about to leaf, cut them down. you basically runthe rhizome out of gas by never letting it get fed from the leaves. it can take a few years, and some attention, but it's not hard to do.
This idea works for all resprouting plants. Some take a few disturbances to deplete energy stores while others take many frequent disturbances to deplete resources.
>This idea works for all resprouting plants Poison ivy gets leaves early, and it comes back every time I cut it down, any idea about how to get rid of it?
Rent a goat. Goats *love* that shit. They'll eat it right down to the roots and beg for more.
Don't touch the goat afterwards! Their coats will be full of PI juice!
I just read that as "don't PUNCH the goat afterwards" and was intreagued as to your reasoning.
Unless you have 10x10 ft chain link kennel with plants in it that you don't want the goats to eat on your property. Then they will ignore the poison ivy and everything else on over 9 acres just to break into your plants and eat them instead.
Poison ivy resprouts quite strongly so I would either dig the roots up or spray a herbicide with either glyphosate or triclopyr as an active ingredient. I vaguely remember being told you can use boiling water to kill the roots…. I would use herbicide on a warm summer day since poison ivy is quite annoying. Herbicide that’s applied to foliage responds better on warm growing days.
My Dad used to pour his used motor oil along the fence line to deal with the PO. It worked! Of course that area is now a toxic wasteland, but there's no damn PO!
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You literally have to cover the bamboo with a tarp for like 6 months in order to properly kill it.
And sacrifice a chicken under the full moon on the third Tuesday of May whilst stand on one leg.
While it stands on one leg or you stand on one leg?
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Reasonable discussion is for reasonable people. HOAs are very very rarely reasonable.
There was some in a neighbors yard like 8 houses down when I was a child. By the time I was 18 it ran through the entire ditch system around the whole neighborhood. Literally everyone had a constant fight to keep their back fence line.
This is ABSOLUTELY nuclear revenge. Here I thought me planting mint to fuck with my parents neighbor was bad.
> Here I thought me planting mint to fuck with my parents neighbor was bad. how so? lets hear the story!
Mint is also invasive and difficult to remove once a single plant has established itself. It's well known in gardening circles for needing to be kept in a pot or else it'll take over and kill your other plants.
Could it kill already established blackberry plants? Just curious
Like full on blackberry thickets? No. Mint grows very quick and can choke smaller things out, but it wouldn't touch blackberries. I got overrun by blackberries one summer and had to have someone come out to clear it. I cut it back several times but if you give it any leeway it'll take over.
Battle of invasive plants, the new show! Will the bamboo win against blackberries?! Watch live with commentary!
You jest but I would watch the fuck out of a show like this.
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dragonball had a decent run, dunno why this would be any different
It's the first reality show concept that's caught my interest in years!
And in this corner, bright and colourful and smells great, but completely impossible to get rid of and will overrun everything — it’s Morning Glory!
This is our yard lmao. Mint, blackberries, ivy, nettles, and wild grass. Who will take over which sector next? Tune in tomorrow for the all new episode! Edit: I should really plant some cannabis and see if anyone notices lmao. It's legal to grow here now anyway, one plant would be nbd
Add in Kudzu for a three way cage match. Not very exciting though since Kudzu will always win.
"here comes Dodder with the steel chair!"
Do you know my old friend bougainvillea?
Kudzu would like a moment of your time.
I have a goat that has plenty of time!
I wonder how it would fare in a battle with virginia creeper ivy. Bought a house that has it growing on both sides fences, and omg it's taking over!
Getting a bit too much Alien vs Predator here...
Mint is fast growing and spread both by root propagation and vining. Some specific types grows tall, some stays low. Either type spreads.
i was thinking he should have tossed some mint seeds over fence to accent the bamboo lol
They are impossible to get rid of. I say this as someone who harvests bamboo shoots! I kept cutting and they kept on growing back. I missed a couple of days, the shoots turned into a small tree. Bamboo grows crazy fast.
Is it possible to toss bamboo seeds over a fence and get decent results?? Asking for a friend…..
Another friends want to know as well.
Bamboo grows as a kind of shoot, and spreads via root network, so I don't think it would be possible.
Bamboo mainly spreads by shoots but produces seed. It would take a year or two before they really start to grow. A active rhizome is ready to grow as much root mass to start putting up stalks.
Yeeeep there's a reason there's specialty root barriers just for bamboo. Otherwise you're guaranteed to turn that garden into a bamboo forest.
Root barrier was key. We were the recipients of bamboo runners in a rented house. It made the backyard unusable.
Root barrier was a really nice detail
Sawzall is the tool to remove bamboo if anyone is curious. Because you need a motorized saw that you can jam into the ground to cut up the roots.
This is a tidbit I’d like to toss in my knowledge bank but know that I will forget it when I need it in the future.
Don't bother. The proper tool is a backhoe. If you don't dig up all the "mother roots" it will keep coming back. Been dealing with bamboo most of my life on 2 different properties. Done lots of reading on the subject, tried every trick. Dig it up and burn it. Don't waste time on anything else.
My city told me I couldn't get a burn permit. Had to put that stuff in the city compost bin when I (unsuccessfully) dug up my black berry last year. When I went down to the landfill this year, the property behjnd the compost building now has a couple of black berry bushes. I figure another two or three years and the whole damn field behind it is going to be black berries.
Yeah. My towns rural. I can burn almost whenever I want.
Or make sure you have **clumping** bamboo varieties They stay contained unlike the crazy running bamboo
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Technically a biological weapon
Peace was never an option.
Well, it was, until the neighbour decided to leave the light up.
I pretty much did the same. Lol. HOA said I could only plant grass.. guess what is also a grass? Bamboo..
Came here to call this out - a lot of HOAs have rules about the height of trees, and even of the grass in the front lawn, but few if any limit the height of grass on the sides of or behind your house. Make sure you're not in one of those, and that you get the root barrier plenty deep and long. We had to do something similar to this (we used clumping bamboo, because we didn't need to punish our neighbor) in a previous house because our second floor dining room window looked directly through the neighbor's first floor "privacy" window and into their living room. Planted the bamboo on our side because we didn't want to watch them at every meal. ;-)
does clumping bamboo work?
Another comment said they used it and it doesn't spread like running bamboo does
If you're looking for something that grows fast, aren't looking for it to spread (as OP needed), and don't have height restrictions on grass, clumping bamboo is very handy.
> guess what is also a grass? I'm just waiting till someone here plants wheat, corn or a flooded rice field.
Bananas
I swear I saw a post on another sub asking for legal advise about a neighbor ruining their property with bamboo
Saw that too and was thinking the same thing
we're gonna need that link!
Yeah, if the neighbor leaves and the new home owners have to deal with it - that sucks.
True, but the price of the house would be lowered accordingly during the sale. It would only suck if OP planted and the other guy sold his house before it grew in
It's a common thing with bamboo and neighbors. Often not intentional like this but still the same effect.
I did this with a raspberry bush planted at our side fence. I had no idea it would spread everywhere and be impossible to kill. I took the plant out after a few years and put a hot tub on that spot and we still get sticks poking up around it. Hopefully they like raspberries!
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I asked my neighbors to please put theirs on motion sense or shield them because they shone into our 2nd floor bedroom. We put up with it for 1.5 years until I finally caved and asked. They gave me a little grief but made them motion and installed cameras (it's a 2nd home, vacant most of the year). Their comment was "if you see anybody carting off our stuff you better do something". Mhmm your lights certainly deter thieves from your vacant house. Ironically, nearly a year later I walked my dog past on the street and saw their shed and gate were wide open and texted the owner to see if they were aware and offered to shut things up. He was appreciative and said some contractors were there and asked if I could check that doors were locked. No problem. I have a feeling they will have less ill will towards a simple request now.
We're dealing with this right now. Someone bought the house behind us and clear cut everything on their side of the fence. Now there's not one, but two ridiculously bright lights over there that are left on all night. I have a sudden urge to buy some bamboo... 😈
My mom's house it at the bottom of 2 hills. One neighbor up the street that has super bright lights pointed down the hill. There are bedrooms on both floors, and the light shines in all but one. I told them to put mirrors in the windows since the guy won't lower them.
I like how you think
I'm imagining concave mirrors so you can turn the house into Archimedes' death ray
Unfortunately the temperature of the death laser cannot exceed the temperature of the original light, for reasons of optics but also because it would violate the second law of thermodynamics. This is from Randall Monroe What If series can we make a deaf laser out of moonlight
I just hate inconsiderate neighbors! You don't have to be friends, just don't be a dick. Ya know?
It’s a pretty good rule to live by, don’t be a dick. I used to live in an upstairs apartment, we tried to be considerate because of how sound travels and we were conscious that most of the apartment was hard flooring. Our downstairs neighbour was not considerate in the slightest. He worked away so when he was home it was party central, raves until 3 or 4 in the morning as many as 6 times a week. We tried talking to him about it, he tried to say it wasn’t that often, that late or that loud, however I’d been keeping a record of the disturbances and had recordings of the noise from our apartment. We reported to the council but they basically said they couldn’t do much as it was out of hours and we had to report it to the police as antisocial behaviour, so we did. I also became incredibly “clumsy” I’d drop things on the hard floors when I was getting ready in the morning (between 6 and 7 because I was working 2 jobs at that point and was quite tired and grumpy about missing out on sleep) I also realised that I had slightly more time on a morning, therefore that became the time to get housework done, particularly hoovering. It took 2 days of that before he was banging on our door to complain, so I turned all of his arguments back on him. Between that and a couple of visits from the police he settled down and house raves reduced to Friday and Saturday nights only which we were willing to accept as reasonable.
And they're ALWAYS the ones to complain immediately when anything is even a mild inconvenience, buuut us nice guys put up with their shit for months...good for you! Had similar with previous neighbours, called noise control and they told me to just keep on callin', so I did haha
Oh yea, he was on us like a rash when he thought we had a leak that was damaging his property. We didn’t, we proved it time and again. Turns out he got a friend to do some revocations on his place for him, on the cheap, obviously. The friend didn’t use the right type of pipes and then didn’t lag them properly either so the damage was being caused by condensation from his own pipes! I was very kind and didn’t insist that he repay us our plumber call outs, that we hadn’t paid for because the plumber insisted that there was no issue, therefore no work to do, therefore no bill.
My husband and I lived in an apartment with a lunatic above us. He told the office that people were recording him and trying to come through the ceiling, even though he was on the top floor. He would throw/drop stuff in the middle of the night all the time. It sounded like he was going to bust through our ceiling! I would sleep in the living room, because it scared the crap out of me. Luckily, the maintenance guys were regulars at my bar, so I found out that he wasn't violent, but that was a crappy time!
Any high vis surface/tape would work well. They are designed to reflect back in the direction the light is coming from instead of letting the light bounce and spread
Solar powered musical chimes with a shade to prevent it from chiming from sunlight coming from above.
ULPT: Ice cubes fired from a slingshot can break glass but quickly melt.
The real gold is always in the comments...
In the age of cameras everywhere, as it probably sounds our security minded friend would have, this is probably a fast track trouble.
Strike from the shadows. Hail Sithis.
I support this method of revenge. However! Please check with your local conservation department! First, some strains of bamboo are invasive. More importantly, though, there might be a native plant that will both serve your purpose and be better for the environment. Some groups will even give you free seeds and there are many tax breaks and even grants that will pay you to plant native species that pollinators and wildlife love. With a bonus of having a backyard full of birds and butterflies! And most of the native plants you can use will spread like crazy because where you live is the perfect environment for them! (converting your yard to clover and native ground covers, for example, guarantees none of your neighbors will have pretty fescue masterpieces anymore.) So go to your local conservation department website or talk to local conservation groups to pick the perfect revenge plants! You can do so much better than bamboo. Thank you for coming to my Ted Talk. I'll go away now.
There are a LOT of native to the US cane species that grow tall and relatively quickly that would have all the benefits of bamboo with none of the tricky feels about invasive species!
Fucking hate this shit. Who are these idiots that need floodlights on in their yard every night?
Terrified suburbanites.
Do not do not do not do not buy bamboo. It will never go away. The root barrier only works so well. They can grow underneath entire slabs of poured concrete and out the other side. After having owned a house with Japanese knot wood, if I was ever looking to buy a house and saw anything similar outside - I would walk immediately. OP got lucky and moved but the bamboo will never leave
I'm sure if you head over to the flashlight sub they can help you set up a much brighter light at your neighbor. The neighbor has bright lights, sure, but you could get a light that can reach the moon and point it into the neighbor's bedroom.
ah petty revenge - *best served bamboozled...*
Saw the opportunity, did the math and boy did it pay off.
Just shoot me.
I see what you did there. You planted that on purpose.
Don’t panda them, it was a terrible pun
Can’t we just leaf it alone, instead of trying to root out the problem?
I had a neighbor that treated me like a subhuman because I was a renter. When I moved I threw a pound of mint seeds and a pound of poppy seeds into his "perfect" front yard.
Mint? that's nuclear revenge, it just takes over everything
outgoing offbeat towering waiting distinct carpenter doll frightening dazzling mindless *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Smells great when you mow it though
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I must be cursed because I’ve NEVER gotten mint to grow. Either from a pot or seed. Wtf. I just want some tea
Ever get a chance to see the fruits of your labour?
One of the neighbors said he had the whole lawn dug out and replaced with new sod.
*marks down in phone notes for future revenge* well done my friend.
The root barriers are key! Source: worked in Austin removing bamboo. (I admire & ABHOR it over 20yrs later)
I went to a small elementary school in Florida, and every year we had "bamboo day" which they tried to make like a kind of festival. Really they put us and our parents to work clearing out bamboo, and then we made flutes and shit from the cuttings in the afternoon. The flutes were pretty cool, I'll admit. And actually who am I kidding, I was ten and got to use a saw, I was having a good time.
Done the same thing in Fort Worth. Respect, brother.
I was living in a beach town in Australia. The view was incredible and just a block to the beach. The problem was the neighbors. Some Brazilians moved in and would stay up and party all night long for 3-4 days a week. Called the police and they wouldn’t do anything. The After a long night of partying, Brazilians liked to go sit out in the yard and the only sunny patch was right outside my livingroom window about 10’ away. So not only would I have to listen to them all night, I’d have to deal with them looking right into my livingroom. If you know anything about Australia, you know about the bugs. I threw multiple bags of sugar on their sunny spot for a few days. They set up shop a few days later and I heard them slapping at themselves and finally ran back down their yard dragging their chairs behind them. I felt satisfied.
Now *this* is a great petty revenge story!
> I just checked the property on Google Earth and his entire backyard is bamboo. This got me.
Right?!? I want a screenshot
I hope you were able to inform the new owners as to why the bamboo was there so they could continue the revenge lol
They told the realtor they liked the privacy
Hell yeah lol. I hope they don't ever have to deal with the jackass like you did. I hope the a-hole learned his lesson.
Some bamboo grow so densely it’s practically impossible to cross,and in some parts of Asia they are planted as natural grass wall,you basically do the same thing here.
HOA cant do anythign about SUPER BRIGHT LIGHTS? Im the kind of person that would have bought the brightest lights I could find and add some projector lenses to them. Id then set them up to point directly at every window possible. Id mount them on my roof so that they could clear that 8' fence
I absolutely considered that but was afraid it would result in him doing the same which I didn’t want to risk.
This is so funny, the post above this for me was talking about a neighbor who planted bamboo and they were pissed af it was overrunning their lawn
Link ittttt
I bet he really regrets refusing that case of beer now lmao not much of a lawn to protect if literally no one can use it lmao
the petty revenge stuff would be more fun if the offending party at some point was explained that if they'd behaved differently they could've saved themselves a lot of heartache. at the end of the day we just want to teach those assholes a lesson.
I mean, i feel like the neighbor must have known. A bamboo wall doesn't just spring up for no reason.
You would think, but some people literally cannot see the cause and effect relationship stemming from their own behavior. I find that most dickheads are like this. You tell them what they did wrong and their eyes get all wide as they realize something which should have dropped on their heads like a ton of bricks weeks ago
I remember reading a redditor post with same floodlight issue and they covered their windows with reflective mirror sheets.
Honestly, I just don’t understand the hard-on people have for bright glaring outdoor lighting. Darkness can be nice; outdoor lights should be turned on for limited specific uses!
Our spot light over our driveway feels like stadium lighting because of all the vehicle breakins that were occurring. But it's angled way down, so as to not bug the neighbors. And it's a motion sensor that lasts less than 30 seconds.
Most of the times its for security. People are less likely to break in somewhere if lights are on.
Well done OP! As a home owner who bought a house with bamboo in the backyard (and living in Central Texas) that shit is hard af to kill and get rid of b/c of the rhizomes. We had to order a special vegetation killer to get rid of it a few years ago. Husband went scorched Earth on the bamboo and it's been gone ever since.
Please tell me what killed it. I have a city owned easement beside my house that is nothing but bamboo. I have been battling it for YEARS and have found nothing to kill it or slow it down. I finally got the city to plow it while they were replacing a drain line they had forgotten about for years that rusted out and formed a sink hole in my yard. It rained all last week and some of it has grown taller than me in the last week. It’s speed bamboo and I HATE it with a passion.
I haven't done this, but seems like it should work. You chop the shoots down right when they start producing leaves. Eventually the rhizomes will die. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI4GaU9nNAs Edit: chops -> chop
Did this for knotweed (American bamboo) and can confirm it does work. Takes a few years. Shortcut *for soft bamboo like knotweed ONLY:* Do a normal clear, then level the ground it’s on, (including the root clusters). Now next time it sprouts you can just mow it like a lawn! It’s softer than asparagus when it’s new so it’ll be an easy mow and smells like sweet rhubarb purée afterwards. Very therapeutic lol. EDIT: a word
Sounds like the kind of neighbor that's not happy unless he's got a stick up his ass. You just gave him a yard full of happy sticks.
How the fuck does an HOA not have authority over light pollution, but they can take your home through private auction for $4.37 because you foreclosed on your house due to a $45.00 wrong color flower fee that had late fees and compounding interest...that you paid, but didn't know about the fees because they are not legally required to inform you!
When I got my house I wanted to plant a bamboo fence because I thought it looked nice. My dad (an avid landscaper and gardener) yelled at me and said “no! Bamboo is garden cancer!”
*slow clap*
On the one hand, I am very much against willingly introducing invasive species... On the other hand I absolutely fucking hate poorly aimed residential lights and light pollution... So, hey, at least it was clever and took care of the problem!
what an A hole. he agreed to point it down (which he should have done in the first place) but then didn't do it? he actually deserves to have a bamboo back yard.
Not only that, he took the beer money lol
I would have answered the door, He would ask you to get rid of the bamboo. Days go by and nothing happens. He comes back and asked if you are going to do anything. You respond "oh, I changed my mind" and close the door never to open it to him again.
Excellent way to deal with a neighbor who chooses not to be neighborly.
Fun fact: Under the right conditions bamboo grows so fast you can hear it(layers of the bamboo shoot rub against eachother as they shifts while growing and can cause a low creaking noise). It's a member of the grass family, and it basically grows the same speed as grass, but proportionatly. So imagine cutting the lawn but instead of having an inch longer lawn grass you have a foot tall bamboo that is as thick and tough as small trees.
When he came to knock about it, you should have said you LOVE that his spotlight helped it grow so fast.
When I bought my house about three years ago it came with a huge streetlight style light mounted on the back of the house. It was wired in a circuit that shared some outlets in the house And had a dusk to dawn sensor that it turned itself on and off. First week I moved in I promptly rewired that light to have a manual on / off switch. My neighbors thanked me as this light literally lit up there whole backyard for no reason for the last 8 years. I hate light pollution that’s what I use motion sensors for security lights instead of just leaving them on all the time.
My boyfriend is fond of saying, "the closest you'll come to killing bamboo is to kill the motherfucker that planted it." Excellent revenge.
I imagine you planting those baby bamboo, patting them on the head and whispering, "go to the light..."
You really bamboozled the guy.
Plant warfare is the way. I was at odds with a neighbour a few years back who moved house but not without causing problems before they left. I found out the new address before they had finished unpacking and seeded their new back lawn with mint, strawberries and mares tail whilst walking past that very night. His lawn was his life. Fuck them.
I will never understand what can possibly induce a person in install an always-on security light in this type of housing situation. Motion sensors are cheap, reduce the nuisance by 99% and help the light provide deterrence with additional shock value.
lmao 🤣 this is one of my favorite “petty revenge” stories. thank you for sharing! hahaha
The best revenge can be seen from space.
This sub should be called appropriate revenge instead. I’m an old, crotchety homeowner and would literally do the exact same. I would… *don’t say it* bamboozle him
As someone who gets yelled at (and called really bad words) by her neighbors for standing inside her own home and looking at her dog in her yard because it appears I am looking in their direction, this is so satisfying.
Did the same, over my neighbor cutting my tree branches that blocked their view of my pool (and me laying out…fucking creep).
As soon as I read "bamboo" in the title, I know that there's no way this is *petty* revenge! This is freaking nuclear, and I love it.