My experience has been that squirrels won't bother shoots about as tall as the tall one on the left. You definitely want to take off those covers before branches start, of course. I've used pieces of 1/2" hardware cloth folded into cylinders to protect new shoots. They have the advantage of being able to unfold them if I forget and leave them on until after branches start.

Oh, well. Will this one still grow?

What about this one. It has one leaf lower down. I get the need for tubes of hardware cloth.

I think I need to put a sock on this one until it gets safely past the roofline. I hear squirrels running around up there from time to time.

It looks like you have phyllostachys aurea which is a pretty invasive type which will run all over the place so I don't think you really need to do that much to protect it.

Even shoots that get nibbled off will just keep growing, maybe just a bit shorter.

Keep growing? What about this one? By the way, thanks to stevelau19 for the id, and daveh_sf for the anti squirrel tip. The golden comes from my uphill neighbor who used to have it ringing their back yard. The current people mow it down. I am so busy with much more invasive crap, English ivy, asiatic jasmine, kudzu, wolfbane, nandina, VA creeper, skunk vine, I am happy to have a weed that I can control by eating the shoots!

If it's not rising at all, that shoot is probably done for good, but the energy that would have gone in that shoot will go somewhere else. If you don't mind annual shoot tipping, then it should be fine to grow it.

If you are growing for shoot production, you may get better tasting shoots with phyllostachys dulcis.

Annual shoot tipping? I will google that. The big one at the roof didn't make it past another 12 inches.

However, as stevelau1911 says, energy goes elsewhere...the shoot at upper right was bit off at the ground after it had reached over a foot high, and within twenty four hours the shoot at lower left appeared (see in tp tube).

Still growing after tipped

This post was edited by pontyrogof on Mon, Apr 21, 14 at 9:04