I grow lots of roses in pots. We have a deck where they can be enjoyed better up close. Over the years, I find it essential to pay attention to the following details: 1. Watering. Inconsistent watering is probably a container rose's worse enemy. I have a dripper system with a timer - I can set the timer to water once every few days, or a few times a day. Over the hottest days of summer, it's at least 3 times a day of watering. 2. Feeding - it's true, with all that watering, fertiliser leaches out quickly. My container roses get an application of slow release pellets (3 month) in the spring. The conditions in containers invariably mean that even the control release pellets doesn't last three months - I give it a second application after the first flush. The dripper irrigation system is hooked up to a siphoning system which adds a weak dilution of soluble fertiliser into the water - I get this system started once they are at the peak of blooms. 3. Drainage and aeration. Which invariably means repotting once every two years for containers less than 5 gallons, and 3 yearly for containers 5 gallons or larger. 4. Keeping the roots cool. I suspect that this is a bigger problem than we think. I have documented soil temperatures as high as 40-50 degrees C in pots exposed to late morning sun. A pot-in-pot system seems to be effective in keeping the media cool. 5. Keeping the size of the roses appropriate for the size of the containers. For me, the limiting factor is the size of the containers. Large containers are too heavy and cumbersome to be lugging them up and down the stairs. I any case, I worry that I may overdo it and overload the deck to beyond it's engineered weight capacity. So, I am mindful of keeping the plants from outgrowing their containers by careful pruning. For the same reason, I select the roses carefully. Most of them are miniatures (which seem to thrive better in containers where they don't have to compete with other plants for sunlight and sustenance), the smaller HT's and shrubs. What the above adds up to is that it needs a lot more work than planting the roses in the ground, and often for less blooms. But if you need your roses up close, then, nothing beats having them in containers. One more thing I have learnt is that the mortality rates in container grown roses is much higher than those in the ground. So, I treat them as "throwaway" plants. I.e., I won't grow the only specimen of my most treasured rose in a container - it will get a spot in the garden ASAP. But I accept having to replace the container roses on a regular basis. I don't shed any tears on the miniatures - they are cheap, and there are so many varieties that it's fun to try new ones on a regular basis. Other roses are usually rooted off what I have in the garden. I usually have several rooted "copies" of my favourite container roses on standby to replace sick, dying or dead one's.

GOLDEN BAMBOO, the most common bamboo imaginable, is a most excellent subject for long term container growth. It never reaches maximum size, but compensates for that with thick growth and very interesting little bulges at the the base of the culm, which are more noticeable in containerized plants. every couple or three years, divide it before the spring growing and make ANOTHER CONTAINER. A real beauty for containers is Semiarundinaria fastuosa, and really, it is untried where you are, we normally give it a minimum of 20 degrees, but we are horribly conservative. it is one of the few bamboos which looks and grows in containers almost as well as in the ground. a real beauty, too. Fargesias are the most cold hardy of all the clumpers, in fact, they do HORRIBLY in Southern California for the most part, since they seem to need a cold winter. The American Bamboo Society has a source list, and it is wise to get bamboo in a climate very like the one in which you intend to grow it, whenever possible.

Hi Cadence, Here's a video on division. In regards to total height, I'll use my Nigra as an example. We bought 15 gallon specimens of Nigra in 2008. There were approx. 5 culms (stalks of bamboo) in each pot. Each culm was around 4-6' tall. We planted the bamboo. Nothing happened for a year. Then in the spring of 2009 we got a bunch of new shoots coming up next to the old culms. The new shoots grew to approx. 10-12' high and stopped. Nothing happened for another year. In 2010 we got a bunch of new culms coming up. They all died. I think it was a really cold winter that never really turned into spring that did it. We didn't have much of a spring or summer last year, it was just cold the whole time. But who knows... :) Currently we have the original culms (still 4-6' tall), the 2009 culms (still 10-12' tall) and we are getting tons of new shoots that have grown several feet in the past week. Some are nearly as tall as the second year growth and there's no sign of them stopping. I don't know if this year's growth will reach the maximum I'm told to expect in my area (20-25'... even though max height is around 30-35') but I think they'll probably make it to around 18' this year at least. Once the new culms come out and are fully established I can go in and cut out some of the smaller stuff. Oh... and the original growth of 4-6' also had culms a little bigger around than a pencil. It's fully black. The second year growth still isn't entirely black (spotted green/black) and it's about as big around as a man's thumb. The growth that is coming out now is about twice as big around as the second year growth and is probably as big around as they will get. I hope this helps explain what is expected. The cool thing about bamboo is that it doesn't keep growing once it reaches max height potential. So, unlike other plants that you have to keep trimming back (hedges,etc), once your bamboo reaches the height you want it at you can cut it to that height and it will stay like that for the rest of it's life span. All you'd need to do is cut off new culms to that height once they finish growing. Here is a link that might be useful: Bamboo Division

First, those pots are too small for growing bamboo over the long term. Second, to my knowledge, seeds are not currently available for those two kinds of bamboo; in fact, bamboo only put out seeds every 20-150 years, so your likelihood of finding seeds available for a specific species are slim. Third, there are seeds available for some species, but you should only buy from U.S. sources as it is a violation of Federal regulations to import any kind of bamboo seeds without a one year quarantine. Fourth, if you succeed in growing bamboo from seed -- and it is not always easy to do so -- it will typically take about 5 years for a plant to reach 4-5 feet...and indoors it will probably still be much smaller. So, if you really want to grow bamboo, you should go to a nursery that specializes in bamboo and buy yourself some potted bamboo divisions. These are plants that are made by dividing bigger bamboo and re-potting them, and is how most of us acquire different species. I'm not trying to discourage you...just injecting some real world considerations. Good luck.