(written by The Biologist and originally posted at www.permies.com)

Compost
Our first order of business was to start a compost pile. As brown material, we had a lot of leaves, as the the building across the street had put out many bags of them to be picked up by green waste. For green, we had kitchen scraps, but not nearly enough. However, the bamboo growing on the property is basically evergreen, and some websites we looked at suggested that as long as it is green, bamboo leaves are considered a nitrogen source. So we layered the brown and green with soil, as suggested in the Grow Biointensive method. Not sure we added quite as much water as is suggested in the youtube videos, but did moisten in somewhat, and built a pile that was about 4X4. The first picture shows what the bamboo leaf looked like after 3 months, when I tried to turn the pile: slightly greener and fresher looking than when we put it in. No sign of rooting or growth (thank goodness!) but also no sign of any of it starting to rot. I don't know if it was the cool temperatures, the fact that the leaves were dormant even though they were green, or some other factor, but building a winter pile with bamboo and oak leaves is NOT the route to quick compost, though I've no doubt it will break down eventually. Other leaves from our cut down bamboo have turned brown and started to look moldy, so it might be a weather related thing.

Another problem I'm still struggling with is what to do with half rotted bamboo canes. There are a LOT of them, courtesy of a wind storm some years ago, than need to be cleaned out of the grove. I don't think they will make good hugel culture, and in any case we don't have the soil or machinery to make that very practical. And while they do rot eventually, I wish I could do something other than pile them up and wait for years. But patience is a virtue, they say.

3 Months Later

The bamboo leaves are still not composted

A fence
Inspired by the junkpole fence forum at permies.com, I went ahead and built a fence out of the bamboo we were cutting back. I dug holes 6-10 inches deep, then used a post hole digger (a heavy iron bar, basically) to extend 2 narrow holes a bit farther down. I then placed two thick and mostly straight bamboo poles about 4 inches apart. I back filled the holes with subsoil from around the roots of a tree that had grown and fallen at the edge of the garden - it was a good use for the mound of subsoil that had been brought up. You can see it in the second photo below. I tamped it down with a short length of bamboo, and with my feet. The poles were a bit of a challenge - we are cutting everything with heavy duty loping shears, and sometimes the canes split when you cut them, and those I threw out. I also made sure to cut the tops close to a node, so that I didn't have water pooling in the tops and speeding up rot.
Next, I used jute twine to lash poles going diagonally/horizontally between the two stakes. I sort of followed the ideas of the Scandinavian roundpole fence in the Junkpole thread ( https://permies.com/t/47946/junkpole-fence-freaky-cheap-chicken ) though with a lot less finness!!! I managed to just use (decomposable) twine for the fence, but for the gate I did use long #6 bolts, in predrilled holes. The metal stake that the gate is attached to was found in the garden as part of the old dilapidated fence that had been there, so all I needed to buy was some wire for the hinge, bolts, and twine. I set the gate (with the bamboo cut a couple inches below a node so that it was already hollow) onto a short branch of honey locust. I don't know that it will last long since it was still pretty green and soft, but then the whole fence will probably rot in a few years anyhow.

As for effectiveness, we are still having things eaten, but I suspect rabbits rather than deer. Still, we need a wildlife camera to know for sure whether the fence is keeping them out.

1.8 Acres in Maryland (II): Uses for Bamboo (March 2017)