Apparently you are in No. CA, but I wonder if you have the giant reed grass there that we have here in So. CA. It's also called arundo, I believe. It is very invasive and can sprout from small pieces left in eradication efforts. Not sure if this is what you have, though. And maybe if when it is chipped and then mulched, perhaps it would no longer sprout. In short, I don't know! But there you have my 2 cents.

Since the county work crews are performing this "cut down",call the county and get the information from them. I found that calling city/county government offices, you sometimes get the "I don't really know" answer, Don't settle for that, if they don't know, they shouldn't be messing with the enviornment. This is when tenacity very often pays off! God luck!

We are just so happy that they are cleaning out the creek. It was/is full of garbage, old tires(they pulled out 8 this week in less then 100 yds), cottenwood trees, berry bushes, poison oak and who knows what else. These are not the same people who planted the tamerask, just the county roads dept. They are going through the creek with a convict crew to clean it out. They came through this week with a bull dozer and dug out lots of sand,gravel and dirt. They hauled away truckload after truckload. They gave us 4 big truckloads so we could fix the potholes in our private dirt road. We had complained because we were worried about the danger of flooding as the creek was so clogged up with stuff. Free mulch delivered to my yard is just the iceing on the cake for us. There are 5 families on this little road and we will sleep much better during the rainy season once the creek is cleaned out.
Donna in Orland

I would not be able to resist the offer of free mulch in large quantities although I would cover the pile with black plastic for several months and hope that the sun would cook away all the pests and seeds.

The vegetative material after being chipped will not in my opinion be able to sprout but seeds certainly would. I also would be happy to have it but would compost it before using. Al

I'd suggest you compost it. I don't know about tamarisk, but bamboo can definitely resprout from chopped roots.

I'm betting that the stuff you're calling "bamboo" is Arundo donax, too, as Socks mentioned. It's common along seasonal waterways, between Sacramento and Redding, which we travel between frequently. If it is, I sure hope the cleanup crews do the extra work to dig it all out. If they don't, it will definitely return. Once established, it's very difficult to remove.

Brenda

I'm pretty sure it's bamboo. It gets tall and we have cut some down. It is hollow except for where the junctions are.
I will be composting it before I use it. I have horse manure to mix with it.

Um, just a thought, but if there is Poison Oak mixed in there, be really careful with it. Gloves, eye protection and so on.

Arundo donax also has hollow stems. I don't really see much benefit in distinguishing it from bamboo, they're both just overgrown grass.

Ryan

One difference between true bamboos and Arundo (river cane) is that bamboo species rarely are able to reproduce vegetatively from stem cuttings whereas river cane supposedly can. So if your mulch contains true bamboo and does not include significant portions of underground rhizomes you have little to worry about. However, if it is river cane in the mix you may experience sprouting from cut up above ground stems...

Mike

I would suggest that you compost this material in piles first. If you have never composted before, I'm sure you can find several threads here that will give you the basics.
Once the material is composted I would still not recommend mixing the compost into the soil, but rather just putting it on the top like a mulch. Organic material below the top 2 inches of soil really do not do much good. Certainly they do better decomposing slowly from the surface. Once the compost had been in place at least 2 months, add earth worms (if they haven't already found the material themselves.) They are the most wonderful little "rototillers" that keep turning the top couple of inches and ohh so much easier to operate! LOL