A passion for bamboo

Kathrine Alderman
ECB Publishing, Inc.

David Harvey loves bamboo, that's why he's dedicated about 10 years to growing, selling and educating everyone he can about it. Harvey, now 69, started growing bamboo in 2010 and then, due to early retirement, started selling it in 2012. On his 11 acre property, he grows bamboo on about six acres of it.

Harvey became interested in bamboo when, in 1999, he visited South Florida and went to a Thomas Edison and Henry Ford museum in Fort Myers. In the courtyard there, they had giant moso bamboo growing. They only had a few canes there but it was enough to interest Harvey. He asked the lady who was running the tour what exactly the moso bamboo was, as he had never seen bamboo that big. She replied that it was the world-famous moso that Edison kept around for his experiments. His first lightbulb filament was made out of a carbonized strand of bamboo. This interested Harvey greatly, so he decided that, if nothing else, he could grow it and build his own house out of it. Luckily, that isn't all he ended up doing with it, now running his bamboo business to supplement his retirement.

Listening to someone talk about something they are passionate about can really draw you in, and it's no different when listening to Harvey talk about the different types and ways of growing bamboo. Bamboo, unlike trees—which grow from the inside out—grow from the outside in to make the walls thicker, because they are hollow in the center. It is also said that bamboo is the fastest growing grass on the planet, but that growth happens vertically, not horizontally.

Harvey says there are two different types of bamboo, clumping and running. Clumping bamboo grows in an eccentric circle, in a thick section, and is what is generally used by homeowners as a natural fence. This type of bamboo is called tropical, which means it can't take temperatures that are too cold. Running bamboo, on the other hand, spreads out from the “mother plant,” using what are called rhizomes—a continuously growing stem that runs just below the ground—to create a grove. This type of bamboo is temperate, which means that it can stand some colder temperatures, unlike the clumping bamboo. Running bamboo, to quote Harvey, “gives the American people the bad juju, because there is some bamboo that has been left from homeowners—that our fathers and grandfathers used to make their own fishing poles. Well, that bamboo has been left unattended. It has to keep running to feed itself. If you take care of it, it stays where you grow it.”

Though running bamboo can be seen as impossible to deal with, Harvey shows that it can be done, with his grove of running bamboo that is fifteen years old. The grove itself is contained to one-third of an acre and Harvey says the trick to keeping it contained is to just cut out one-third of the canes in the fall, harvest one-third of the fresh, new shoots in the spring and then water and fertilize it. “Then it stays happy where it's at,” Harvey says, “it doesn't have to expand. But if you just let this grow...it chokes itself out and has to expand to get more nutrients.” It's all about how you care for the plants, and Harvey will give you all the information you need to keep your bamboo happy and healthy.

Harvey grows a variety of different bamboo, but most of what he sells are starter plants—bamboo that is kept in three-gallon containers that you then buy and plant where you want it. He sells cuttings from his “old growth” bamboo, which, he says, has the energy of the older bamboo, so it grows faster than a fresher starter plant. Though he sells 23 different varieties of bamboo, Harvey says that, among those, 12 are pretty popular and the rest most don't even know about. However, he hopes that as time goes on he can teach people because that is his main goal. “I want to teach people that bamboo is wonderful and good,” he said.

But how “wonderful and good” is bamboo? The answer is: much more than you would think. Harvey lists the many things that bamboo can do, from having thousands and thousands of products that can be made from it to its leaves making a tea that helps with arthritis. Harvey drinks the bamboo tea himself to help with his arthritis, though he says you have to drink it twice a day for it to really help. It can be made green, straight from the leaves, or you can dry them in a cardboard box to make it that way—and it has to be a cardboard box, they don't do well in any other type of container.

Bamboo is extremely versatile, according to Harvey, he says that anything you can make out of pine trees, you can make out of bamboo. Some ways of processing that have recently arisen even make bamboo better and easier to use than pine trees. The number one reason to use bamboo over pine trees, however, is that a pine forest takes 25 to 30 years to grow to the point that you can harvest it for products and, after that, you have to replant it. Bamboo, on the other hand, if you follow Harvey's management practices, is forever. Once you plant it and start harvesting it you can harvest forever. The other point he wants to emphasize is that anything you can make with cotton you can also make with bamboo. With using bamboo fibers you can make what is called bamboo rayon, as that is the closest material it resembles. Harvey's own hat is made using bamboo rayon.

In the end, Harvey just wants people to try it and see how good it is. He says, “Here's what I want people to do: I don't care what you're doing now, don't stop, but just add bamboo to what you're doing. If you have large acreage you can do the running kind, if you have small acreage you can do the clumping kind. It all makes the same products.” His immediate goal is to teach people, in steps, the ways that they can harvest and benefit from bamboo. From harvesting the shoots for the food industry to making bamboo vinegar—which is used in many types of skincare products—he'll teach you how. He's so passionate about making a bamboo industry in America, that even if you don't buy the bamboo from him, he'll still share his knowledge with you to help you be successful.

Harvey will also be holding a farm tour on Saturday, Oct. 10 and Monday, 12 and invites everyone to come out for free refreshments and to walk around his bamboo groves. For social distancing reasons, there will be no one-on-one tours, but he will answer all the questions he can and will be handing out pamphlets of information.