Need some advice

I want to send some Iris to my wonderful neices in Georgia & South Carolina. Their climate is so different from ours (we live in th Michigan's Upper Peninsula) that I am not sure how the girls should plant them....mulch or no mulch ? They have clay soil, which they are amending. And that fierce Southern sun!!! Should they leave the rhizomes bellies showing as I do waaaaay up North ? I will not send the iris until mid-September, thinking that it will be more hospitable for the rhizomes then.
Any advice would be most appreciated. Thanks !!
Marsha

mulch should not touch bearded irises. They should try & contact the local iris society for planting instructions. Look for their region on Athe AIS site. www.irises.org

Definitely don't mulch in clay soil. I mulch here, but I'm on sand.

I have e-mailed some of the Southern Iris Societies, but have not heard back from them.
Hoping that an Iris lover from a SE state will respond here ??

I started gardening with clay soil here in the South. Irises are tough and can be mailed anytime. I plant them all summer long with no problem. I'm always digging them and transplanting them or trading them and shipping them.

I do mulch around them but not over them. I have to mulch to keep the weeds out and to help retain moisture. We don't get much rain during the summer, so mulch protects my irises. I just don't cover them up with it. I mulched in clay soil and I mulch in rich black soil now too. I always mulch so they don't have to compete with weeds and grass. And it just looks better.

And yes, I leave the bellies showing. I plant the lower half of the rhizome, leaving the top half out to sunbathe. LOL

Irises are so hardy and forgiving that as long as you don't smother them or overwater, they'll pretty much survive anything. The first ones I got were heirlooms that I later decided I didn't want. I ripped them out one summer and tossed them out back meaning to trash them and forgot about them. They sat on top of the ground all summer and thru the winter. The next spring, they bloomed better than ever before and I decided to add them back into my gardens. After that, I began collecting them.

Can you tell us what part of SC? Not all parts of SC have the same whether. I live on the Atlantic coast of SC. I have many lovely and very healthy iris. It took me a little trial and error to find what works best for me.

Where I live it is VERY hot in summer, with actual temps in the low hundreds and heat indexed temps up to 120F. It is also incredibly humid here. Humidity runs 80-100% much of the summer. We get LOTS of rain, an average of 52in a year. The soil here is clay, white/grey clay, primarily limestone type. Charleston is slightly below sea level, so many areas flood badly even in an ordinary heavy rain. My yard is prone to be soggy after a heavy rain and hard as stone and dry as the desert in places w/o rain - that's the effects of clay. There have been times when I thought for sure my iris would drown.

I amended my soil with lots of compost to lighten it up and add drainage. I'm sure sand would also help the iris, but I never got around to it. I lost a lot of iris the 1st year. After that, I wised up. Now I take care to plant my iris in the drier area of my yard. I have some very happy iris planted on a slope which protects them from standing water during torrential downpours and periods of extended heavy rain. I have other very happy, healthy iris planted in beds along the SSW side of my house. This area tends to be dry because the eaves and gutters prevent most of the rain from reaching them. It's a particularly hot area, drenched in full sun from late morning until shortly before sundown. Not a lot of plants can handle that much heat/sun, but my iris seem to love it there as they are thriving and multiplying.

The 1st year I planted my iris by covering the rhizome just slightly as indicated in the directions I received. Most of them rotted within 2yrs. After that I started planting them 'on top of the soil'. Basically, I put a little loose soil over the roots ONLY and leave the entire rhizome above ground. I usually have to mound a little soil around the sides to get them to stand upright. Then I leave them alone. Believe it or not, that works for me. It's a bit tricky to keep them upright until rooted, but the iris actually seem to pull themselves down to the level they prefer. I try to keep the 'backs' bare. I don't use any mulch on my iris. Since I changed to this method, I've had great success.

In summation, I say plant in drier areas, on slopes, raised beds, etc; leave backs of rhizomes exposed (at a minimum); and no mulch.

Oh, and in my area I prefer to receive my iris in September vs July/Aug when many are shipped. It's way too hot here this time of year, so I usually have to find a place to unpack the July/Aug shipments so they can sit in a single layer until later in the year for planting. Winters here are extremely mild. I have planted my iris as late as Jan/February and still had them all survive and even bloom in spring. (I'm not recommending that, just that it's doable when circumstances prevent one from planting in fall.)

I hope this helps. Here are a few pics of my iris from this past spring (and the yr before). These are not the best or latest photos as I'm often too lazy, er, I mean busy, to post photos:
http://davesgarden.com/tools/journal/showimage.php?eid=233722
http://davesgarden.com/tools/journal/showimage.php?eid=203301
http://davesgarden.com/tools/journal/showimage.php?eid=203298

North Augusta SC and Augusta GA

I will ship next month.

Have you had any luck with the SDB's ?

Thanks for the advise.

I only started buying a few SDB's about 3yrs ago. Out of some 400+ iris, I've probably only purchased some 10 or under SDB's. To date, not one has bloomed. I didn't realize it until you asked this question (and I checked to see why), but apparently they do best in areas with a hard freeze. If they require a fair amount of cold in winter to bloom, then they are not likely to bloom around here. (I have no luck with lilac and my handful of herbaceous peonies only bloom once a decade or so and even then they look a bit puny, and only the early ones bloom at all. I just can't bare to get rid of them since I love peonies so.)

Last winter was a bit colder than usual here. Normally, winter here is the 2nd 1/2 of Jan and the 1st week of Feb. Spring starts in mid Feb. In winter, we get maybe 5 nights that go down to 28F or so. Even then daytime temps will likely zoom back up into the 50's to 70. We get a light dusting of snow roughly once a decade, and it almost never lasts beyond the 1st day since daytime temps here are virtually always well above freezing. My bird feeder gets a thin sheet of ice on top a few nights each winter but nothing that I can't easily break with a bump of my fist and nothing that isn't melted by mid-morning. I never put my summer clothes away and never wear heavy coats and sweaters. Since even a cold morning will likely yield to a nice, fairly warm day by mid afternoon, I dress in layers so I can strip back down to my tank top or sleeveless shirt if need be.

I'm not familiar with the Augusta area. My best guess is that it's probably not quite as hot there as here most of the time, and they probably see a bit more cold in winter, so they may have better luck with those SDB's than I have. Although I list my area as 8b because that's what most zone maps say, some maps show us in Zone 9 which is probably more in line with the weather I've experienced here. Charleston is part of a narrow strip along the SE coast where the weather is quite close to that seen in a band that encompasses the upper 1/2 of Florida, the lower parts of Alabama, Mississippi, and LA, and the SE part of TX. I'm thinking Augusta is probably a bit more hospitable for most plants.

You also mentioned concern about whether they should plant their iris in full sun. Most of mine are planted in full sun and they not only do well but actually do much better than those in less sunny areas of my yard. The area on the SSW side of my house where many of my iris are planted is actually quite brutal. It's not only dry due to the eaves catching the rain, but there is no shade there at all, so that the sun beats down unrelentingly from mid morning through late afternoon, the hottest part of the day. (I rarely have the courage to visit that part of the yard this time of year.) The house (along which they are planted) is a pale cream color which bounces the sun's rays back at anything planted there making it hotter and brighter still. The iris seem to be doing better there than anything else I've tried. They are thriving and multiplying and they bloom well.

If you want to send medians, try IBs. Since one side of their ancestry is TB they have a better chance of succeding in warmer climates.

I do have IBs and BBs that bloom, and, of course, lots of TBs. I do think the TBs have done best for me.

While checking for IBs I found that I do have at least one SDB Gnu Generations that blooms. I didn't realize that one was an SDB. I've really only tried a handful of SDBs, but the others like Dot Com, Neutron, Prank, Puddy Tat, etc have not bloomed to date. Most have only been in the ground for 2yrs; however, this past winter was an especially cold one for us. Seems like they would have bloomed this spring if they were going to bloom, but maybe they need more time to get established. Don't know.

I forgot to mention one thing earlier. I think this says a lot about the climate here. I have a 'house plant', one of those large, split leaf philodendrons (that many people grow outdoors in Florida) growing in a large pot on my driveway. I rolled it out there one summer 10yrs ago expecting to bring it back in before winter killed it. It has been out there ever since and is still alive and doing well, so, clearly, it doesn't get all that cold here. I believe that is a Zone 10 plant.

Good luck. Just a suggestion, but since I had to experiment a bit to find the right combination to get iris to grow well for me in this climate and considering that I lost a lot of the ones I planted the 1st year, it might be a good idea to start by sending some 'experimental' TBs the 1st year and then send others in subsequent years once they get the hang of it. Just a thought.

What Butterfly Chaser said.....works in this hottern hell climate

I have heard it said that our winters are not cold enough for th SBD..they don't do well for me



This message was edited Aug 10, 2010 4:57 PM

SDB do need the weather we have here in OR...they do better than many TB here

D