Bamboo is thought to be nearly impossible to weed out, but no beast can remain beastly forever without a source of energy.
As described in a post in June, 2008, the hard part of the counter attack was done a couple years back, when my neighbor permitted me to cut the whole, dense, 20 foot high bamboo clone to the ground--on both sides of the fence. It then sent up a new batch of long stems, which I cut just as they were starting to leaf out. The whole idea was to prevent the Thing from collecting any new solar energy, forcing it to spend its reserves on new shoots that would get cut before they could send any energy down to the roots. Time, and the imperatives of metabolism, were on my side in this "drain the energy bank" approach to superweed combat.
Last year, I again cut the new shoots down to the ground just as the stems were starting to send out leaves.
This year, it sent up only a few strange stems, each crowded with unusually dense leaves. Grasping one stem, I felt like I was shaking hands with a woolly green bear out of
Fifteen minutes of lopping and it was time to declare victory, though I don't dare turn my back for long.