Brand New Garden

I have finally turned the corner on creating "new" land at my house. Pictures will follow! After moving & sifting countless tons of "dirt" by hand! I will be ready to plant the multitude of irises arriving late next week.

I know it is late in the season for my location to plant Iris, but giardiasis just really knocked me out.

What is the best way to protect the newly planted Iris from the hard severe freeze I am expecting, (based on my own unscientific observations ;)?

I know now why the pick and shovel are part of Colorado's state emblem! It must be a tribute to the heroic gardeners that live here! LOL!

Sonny

I live in NY and we get a good hard freeze here too. The irises that I plant in the fall seem to do just fine without any extra protection. I even plant them with their bellies mostly bare due to all of the rain we get here (rot too much if deeper). Maybe if you are worried about them, plant them a little deeper and then bare them in the spring?

What DancingBear said! We never protect ours and sometimes get down to -15°! We lose some once in awhile, but that can be expected. Ours hunker down deeper than we plant them, and we get very little rot.

I think that the people with dry climates like yours gave the best advice. However as an alternative we use a pine needle mulch to prevent heaving, which might be helpful for their first year. Colect rocks or bricks? One placed on top of a rhizome can also prevent heaving. Or you can check which plants seem to have not settled in withtheir roots tight in the ground & only put objects on top of those. I suspect that once the ground in CO is frozen, it stays that way. Our techiques are present because we can get alternate freezing & thawing throughout the winter.

We get the freezing & thawing throughout the winter too. But usually the roots on the newly planted TB in August are well developed before the first heavy freeze, so there is very little heaving noticed.