Bamboo Report

Today I decided, in the fabulous weather, to plant the quart of muscadine seeds that had wintered in my refrigerator. In the fall, I bought a ton of fresh muscadines. I ate about half of them and seeded and froze the rest. I saved all the seeds. Reading up on them told me that they needed a distinct cold period to germinate. We can't be sure that we will get enuf cold weather every winter, so I opted to store them in the ice-box.

Prompted by my good friend Polly's death, i went around the propertly line w/ a small spade and scratched them into the soil up against tree trucks, fence posts and anywhere I thought they'd have some support to carry the vines on up into the trees. One of the things that bound Polly and me together was the love of muscadines. She and Ken have great muscadines out on their place outside Memphis proper in the Cordova side of Arlington, TN. Lots of years she let me come pick huge buckets of them.

Also, in years gone by, Ken had taken me to a friend of his place to pick muscadines that were the most gigantic I had ever seen.

So while digging in the soil, i had ample opportunity to take a close look at each and every bamboo. And I am happy to report that I saw numerous NEW BAMBOO SHOOTS coming out from the base of many of them !! SUCCESS !!

Thanks Barbara, you precious peach, for the big sack of Nursery Special Fertilizer !!

So I will be watchin' over the next couple of years to see if any of my saved seeds from special varieties of muscadine sprout and grow. I will think of Polly when they do.