Though plantations are generally not given fertilizer, ammonium sulphate or calcium-ammonium nitrate (200g) and superphosphate (200g per plant), if applied at the time of planting, promotes development of roots; a similar dose is also recommended in the second year in July. Combination of biofertilizer (Azotobacter) and inorganic fertilizer yields significant height. About 3-5 weedings, and hoeing around plants, earthing up, and mulching are done during the first three years of planting. Protection of seedlings both in nursery and field from rats, hares and porcupines, goats and cattle is essential; wild pigs eat the tender rhizomes. Constant cutting of the young plants results in useless bushy growth. Many fungi and insects have been found attacking various bamboos.

Uses:

• Can be grown to stablise shifting sands, stream-banks, drainage channels, watersheds, eroded riverbeds, on denuded wastelands, hill slopes, etc.; landslides can be controlled by planting bamboos above and below hillside roads or steep embankments of roads. Serves as a valuable windbreak. Extensive, shallow and fibrous root system also improve fertility and texture of soil and conserves moisture. Recommended for agrisilviculture.

• Timber :Easy availability, cheapness, strength, straightness, smoothness and lightness combined with hardness, and facility and regularity with which they can be split make bamboos the choice-timber, particularly for houses, huts, etc. in the humid tropics. Used in foundations, and for frames, floors, partition-walls, doors, windows, ceiling and roof, ladders, buckets, vessels, gutters, water-conduits, etc.; can be substituted for steel in concrete after a protective coating. Employed for various types of boards, mats and veneers. Numerous articles of everyday use, such as textiles, mats, screens, blinds, ropes, lashings and wickerwork are made from thin, tough and pliable strips of immature culms. Bamboos from the basic raw material for paper pulp and rayon.

• Yields good firewood; charcoal from bamboo is reported to have more calorific value than that from other woods; hence, used by goldsmiths. Recently, a liquid-fuel is reported to have been prepared from the culms.

• Young shoots are edible.

Where to sell:

• Wood can be sold to furniture shops or to timber merchants for construction and other purposes.

• Wood can also be sold for firewood, especially to goldsmiths.