WOW, great news Cameron! The first year is the hardest for the Aucubas....you should be all set now.......they grow pretty fast in my climate.....mine is nearly 6 feet tall now.

I have a few aucuba cutting collected last winter in London. And they have started growing already. Below is a pic of new growth and flowers of my 20 + years plant. Cameron hope your's will be blooming in a few years.

I love Acubas and they grow pretty well down here. Very exotic and they don't miss a beat during the winter. Their only enemy is lots of direct sunshine. I move one to a shadier spot as it was getting torched.

Canadianplant, that Fargesia in between the Aucubas is doing really well also; there are lots of new leaves and shoots coming up!

Tim, thanks! I always enjoy seeing the pics of your Aucuba.

Igor, that's great to hear! I am thinking of taking one or two cuttings from these Aucubas this season.

JackLord, Aucubas are a great shade plant! If you look at the leaves in the front compared to the ones at the back, you can notice a bit of a colour difference. Even though they're planted in a shady spot, I think the front leaves might have still received a bit too much winter sun.

Over the winter, I put the 5 gallon T. fortunei through hell! The reason I did this was because I was re-selling some palms from the same source, and wanted to make sure that they were indeed Canadian-grown palms, and not the wimpy T. fortunei from south Texas or Florida. I left the palm outdoors (with the root ball in a plastic bag, not in-ground) until the temps reached -10 C. I then kept it in my garage for several months, on a cold concrete floor, where the temps rarely rose above 5 C (and the root ball on the concrete floor would have been close to freezing for months). I also barely watered the palm.

Well, a couple of months ago, I noticed that the palm seemed to have handled all it could 😆 I ended up cutting off the outer fronds, and the emerging spears were almost completely burnt. One spear continued to emerge, and it was 100% burnt. I made a mark on another emerging spear, and began to water the palm more regularly. The spear grew, and the bottom half was fine. There's also another 100% fine spear that is emerging. I'd say that this palm is pretty tough! 😆 Today, I decided to plant it.

The planting area (a sheltered, south-west facing spot):

You can see where I marked the palm, and all of the continuing burnt growth. Towards the bottom of the spear, you can see the emerging green growth:

After planting (again, notice the difference between the burnt growth at the top of the spear, and the new, green growth towards the bottom of the spears):

We'll see how it does!

As well, I have been surprised with how quickly (and far 😆 ) all of the bamboo shoots are emerging. Even within one day, I noticed a change in the P. bissetii shoot growth. Here's a pic of one group:

I also planted a small F. nitida the other day 😆

Hi Cameron,

that's a pretty big Trachy......keep us posted on it's growth this season.

The new bamboo shoots look far larger than last years growth.......nice. 🙂

Hey CAmeron

Every single bamboo ive planted in the ground has put out a dozen or more shoots. Some took as fast as a week,some took a month, but they all had a flurry of shoots. Only one ended up woth larger culms by the end of the year. THe F scabrida put out shoots from june (a week after planting), and didnt stop till november, when we got REALLY cold. Dont expect to much o an upsize this year, just enjoy the massive amount of new culms ya have 😀

I planted P.Bissetii a few years ago,it didn't do much the first 2 years but exploded this year!

Thanks, everyone. I've heard that it is usually in the 2nd or 3rd year when bamboos really start to grow!

Heres a picture of it 6/4/10

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11/9/11

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And this morning 5/22/12

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Wow, nice comparison shots!

The tallest P. bissetii shoots have now become taller than last year's growth:

Both Aucubas are blooming:

Nice Cameron!

I cant remember, did you protect the bissetti during winter?