This is CRAZY- SEED PODS EVERYWHERE!!!!!

I have been raising iris for 5 years. I have done some crosses and have produced a few seedlings that bloomed this year, as a matter of fact. Anyway, after bloom I cut the stalks in Bed A and B and they are done. This morning I walked the garden and see volunteer pods, yes pods all over the other beds that I had not yet gotten to. We had loads of rain and wind during blooming time, like nothing I have ever seen before. I am clueless how so many pods have formed without any deliberate action on my part. Judging from past posts on this subject I expect many do not have seeds in them but this year has been full of so many oddities I just have to add this to experience bank.

K

You must have busy bees. The flower may be stimmulated to produce a pod, but was not fertile enough to make a full one.

I have not seen bees. I have seen little green beetles of some sort with dots on them.They look alot like but more oval than lady bugs. They might be the answer. I will go along with their agenda and support these pods. Since I did not have the usual time on my hands to do crosses this year this could get interesting. Many of these could even be pollenated with their own pollen which could bring about some fun results. There are numerous ones where both blooms in the socket produced pods.

K

I was in the garden finishing up my spent stalk cleanup this evening only there was a major hitch. I counted no less than 58 seed pods!!! The two crosses I did did not develop but I am overwhelmed with ones I did not do. Some, and I hope most, of these are empty. Every year brings new amazing experiences. I am going to let them go on to ripen and dry on the stalks if the stalks do not develop rot. A number of these have as many as three pods.

Blown away once again,

K

others may tell you better than I, but I've never had a stalk with a pod rot. They do, however, tend to get knocked down if the pod gets heavy, so I stake them.

I was at Schreiners one year, and saw a bunch of Hispanic workers riding on a flatbed with buckets of irises with stalks. It looked from that distance like the stalks had seedling tags on them. You know, the cross markers.

I've wondered ever since if, once a cross starts forming a pod, if they dig that plant to be planted immediately elsewhere. Think I heard of that somewhere, breeders keeping the forming pods in safer locations where it's easier to monitor the pods' health and development. Does anyone know if this is safe for the plant and pod?

Barry Blyth in Australia has been known to cut the stalks & stick them in the ground so he can tend to what he wants to do with the plant. We smaller people are not as busy around the plants, though I have been known to accidently break off a pod while weeding.

that's just it - my pre-emergant didn't "take" and I'm going to be breaking pods off if I weed. we had high heat and heavy rain here - if I don't weed, I'll have rampant rot next.

I emailed a lot of folks two years ago about a pod I broke off stalk and all. It may have been Barry, or it was Paul or Keith, that told me to make a hole in a raw potato and stick the stalk into it, and do it again with a trimmed down stalk if the stalk started to rot. Which I did. The pod survived, but none of those seeds sprouted yet.

I deadheaded every day, and still have surprise pods. I saw bees quite frequently so the conditions must have been near perfect. This one was hidden behind a bloom on Good Day Oregon, the only iris that bloomed in this bed.

oh my, that's a fattie - betcha it has seeds for sure!