Easiest Way to Cut Back Leaves?

I nearly wear my aged old back out every fall when I trim back the leaves on all my iris plants with a pair of
long bladed garden shears.

Has anybody developed an easier way?

Why do you trim back all of the leaves on your iris plants in the fall?

What kind of iris?
inanda

i never trim mine back. why do you? does it make them bloom better?

They are tall bearded. I believe I read somewhere that it helps in maintaining the cleanliness in which they need to avoid borers (by getting rid of all the old debris of leaves and spent portions of the rhysomes).

If this is incorrect, please tell me. I've only grown iris for a couple of years and have little experience. It is definitely a lot of trouble.

Did I get bad information?

Thanks for your opinions.

Kay

Kay,

Have you had a problem with borers?

You could be absolutely right since I don't have borers here and I don't know anything (thank goodness).

Perhaps someone will come along who lives with them.

This link says to clean up all dead debris around the iris. Perhaps that's what you heard?
http://wihort.uwex.edu/gardenfacts/XHT1041.pdf#search=%22iris%20borers%22

I don't know any thing about borers, here's a site with pesticide info. I find the Bayer systemics work very well on most things.
http://www.irisgarden.org/pesticides.html

I know that some people here who have had problems with borers have used it.

A number of iris care websites recommend cutting back leaves to six-8 inches in fall--some say early fall, some say after the first frost.

Some people don't cut them back at all. I haven't in the past, not sure what I'll do this year.

I can see where in cold regions you might want to cut them back. In my perennial garden the evergreen daylilies and the iris foliage are about all that's left. I don't have beautiful snow to cover all the dirt!

I have heard that the borers will lay eggs on dead iris leaves, but not the healthy green ones. They will also lay eggs on garden debris near the irises. I'm sure Laurie can set us straight on this. I am planning to clean up the iris beds this fall, and especially in the spring before they have a chance to hatch. Maybe spring would be a better time to remove the foliage? I'm not really sure.

You can certainly remove foliage in spring as I have had to do that because of leaf spot infections. It's a big job so I can understand how hard cutting back all of your iris must be.

One thought. Take your clippers to be sharpened before you start trimming. It's something that we all forget to do. I dont use long shears because they are meant to cut grass but regular bypass pruners.

I sit on the ground and cut them back with a scissors. Doing a section at a time is much easier than facing all of them at one time. I do it for cleanliness and neatness.

I don't have borers here YET. 'Just trying to avoid them. However, I did have that spotted fungus on them this year. I think I need to go out and spray the part the part of the leaves that are left.

I appreciate everyone's input here.

Kay

Kay, if you have leaf spot you need to get the affected leaves off. Then start spraying when the foliage is about 4" in the spring. I spray every other week for four times alternating two different fungicides and then keep my eye on it. Safer, Bayer and Lilly Miller with Daconil (use a stickative with that one) all are certified for use on Leaf Spot and are available in CA which means that they are safer than many. I also sprayed mine with Messenger along with almost everything else and I know that it made a difference. It's much easier to spray if you haven't used it. You basically just mist the plants and don't have to cover the leaves.

Are there borers in your area?
Here's a map with where borers are. I don't know anything about this product.
https://www.gardenshield.com/index.htm

According to this MS doesn't have borers. At least I think that's what it's saying.
http://magazines.ivillage.com/countryliving/garden/your/articles/0,,284660_294167-3,00.html

Dip any new iris in a 10% bath for 10 minutes and let dry. Then be on the look out for them in the spring. I got a borer in an iris shipment from a commercial place that was certified so you have to do this on all of them. Luckily I found the borer when it began to damage the leaf.

Easy on the back: I like to sit on a plastic chair when I have some weeding to do. I just bend over, and move the chair as I go along. Works for me.
Sharon

I have a 5-gallon bucket and found a swivel, padded seat for it at a sporting goods store. It works great for cutting, weeding, etc., when I don't want to be on my hands and knees!! Also have a pair of Fiskars garden shears that work great for cutting iris leaves and pruning anything that isn't too "thick".

I've got so much work left to do in my gardens, but it's only 54 degrees right now and I'm procrastinating ;~) Judy

So, I need to take my own advice. I'm trimming some iris in a 'V' shape to send to someone and my clippers won't do it but only in one direction. Why don't you try clipping up to the left or right and see if it helps. Not as pretty perhaps but that foliage will go anyway.

Doss, do I need to cut the infected ones all the way down to the rhysome?
Probably so, huh?

And I am a Messenger fan, also. It is the only thing that will make my Herrenhause Garten brug set flowers. I told everybody on all the brug forums about it, and I don't think they believe me. But not many other people have gotten it to bloom. What can I say?

Thanks

Kay

You can't say enough about how wonderful Messenger is. And I do believe that it can help things bloom better. I haven't had to spray my roses for anything until this week and I think that I should have sprayed my dahlias for mildew a couple of weeks ago but they've been unaffected by leaf miners and spider mites this year. Not worth spraying them now. I'm a Messenger believer for sure.

You might as well let the leaves alone now that they've survived the summer and do a preventative spray program next spring. Leaf spot is NOT supposed to kill the iris but it looks pretty awful. I think that it hurts the performance though. Then during the next spring take off damaged foliage if you need to. You only need to take off the spotted part of the leaves. If you do a spray program and Messenger then you probably won't have to do this at all.

Oh, above I told you to dip new plants in a 10% bath before planting and then let dry before planting. That's a 10% clorox solution. Should take care of any borers.

I've found a few plants that don't like messenger though.

What are they?

Hi everyone. I have always cut my irises down to 2" in the fall, as per training from my iris society friends. This discourages borer which I have had and it's awful. Another method is to squeeze the leaves from bottom to top. When I cut them, I clean dead leaves and weed grass, etc. I sit on the ground and I use a wonderful curved serated root knife that the folks from Joe Pye weed gave me when I asked what they were using. I ordered 12 more since I can't sharpen them and they're cheap. I use it to cut down most of the leafy plants of the garden. And clippers for the rest. It saves me tons of time.
http://www.leevalley.com/garden/page.aspx?c=2&p=44046&cat=2,42578,40769

Oh if anyone gets these, wear gloves-these buggers are sharp.

Love your knife! The curve is ideal for the dividing of many perennials.

I buy long strong knives from the local thrift shop. Depending on size you can spend 25 cents or a dollar each. The strength of the blade is very important - if it wiggles you don't want it.

Our radio gardening guy said one of the main reasons to cut back and not leave the iris leaves fallen over is to help cut back on slugs. The "rolly poly's" only eat dead tissue so they should NOT be killed.

Two inches? Every year? Every rhizome?

Hmm. What time in the fall?

Before or after the first frost?

I cut them in late august or september when they look ratty.

pirl

I read that too about the rolly polys but once their little appetites are whetted they can get a little greedy. I have always thought they were cute little guys and I know they are an important part of the ecoscystem but...

A few years ago I rescued a bunch of siberean and japanese iris rhizomes off of a massive nursery dump pile- no diseases, no problems, they were just odds and ends of leftovers and this nursery didn't believe in just giving the leftovers to employees when they redid the beds. They had only been there 14 hours. Some stuff had been dumped on top of them so one of the guys used his bulldozer to help me out. (I was trying to be descreet but hadn't realized that the sight of a girl climbing dump pile on a Saturday morning might attract attention from the guys) Brought them home (the iris, not the guy and his bulldozer) and planted them but little did I know that the bed I planted them in was rolly polly heaven.

The massacre that happened afterwards would have made you cry. It was like a buffet. I even got on the internet because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. I went out at nighttime with a flashlight on night 2 and you could see the little buggers lined up and munching on the healthy rhizome.

In retrospect I should have washed the rhizomes first with H2O2 or something instead of just the hose, I think that the little guys started with the dead tissue and just couldn't stop themselves. Of course I live in the land of endless buffets and overeating, maybe these were just South Georgia bugs........

plantnutga

Constance - We're not talking about cutting the rhizome back 2" each year - it's the leaves that we cut back to 2" in height.

If you are lifting a whole clump to rejuvenate it you'd want to cut back the rhizomes as well as the leaves, hose off, dip in the 10% Clorox solution for 10 minutes, let dry in the sunshine for a day, replant (preferably on a bit of a mound - they need good drainage or they will rot). I'll dmail you.

Plantnutga - there are a lot of roots on both Sib's and JI's. When you're moving even one of them the idea is to cut back the long roots to just a few inches long, hose off, replant in compost/steer manure, mulch heavily, water heavily.

I think the roly poly's were after the dead tissue that hadn't been removed by the one who disposed of them.

Loved your dump pile climbing story and just why wouldn't you bring home the guy with the bulldozer? You could have had more gardens!

This message was edited Sep 20, 2006 7:21 AM

pirl

I swear to you that they ate all the dead tissue, then started munching on the live. I know it doesn't make sense but when I saw the gouges in the rhizomes (that hadn't been there the day before) I actually went outside in the dark with a flashlight and busted them chewing busily on the healthy part.

I would not believe it if I hadn't seen it myself. In their defense I think I planted the iris right on top of their little rolly polly village. I've never seen so many in one bed!

Re: Bubba and his bulldozer, when I came back to work on Monday the story was already all over the nursery about my dumpster diving. Like I said, the sight of one of the "office people" climbing on top of a roof-tall pile of stuff to dig for rejects was not a common sight...

Luckily the nursery I worked for after that didn't believe in throwing away non-diseased plants. The growers and management worked much more closely with the field workers, shipping, and sales. They gave a good discount, also let people know when stuff was being marked down to "landscape grade" and would encourage the employees to take home anything that was ready to be dumped. You build up a lot more good will that way.

That sounds much better than dumping them.

The greenhouses around here regularly dump plants if white fly or any other problem is present. My DH bought home some mums, with plant stickers in them and the name of my granddaughter was the name of one of the mums. Upon hearing about them my neighbor asked if I'd pick her up some dump mums. I came back with 74 for her and the car was heavier leaving the dump than entering. The poor guy at the weighing station was scratching his head as to how the car could be heavier on the way out!

Roly Polys or sow bugs or doodle bugs as I called them as a kid do eat living matter in my experience, usually sprouts of seeds, just coming up. I haven't seen them bother anything very large, but if you had millions of them, I suppose anything is possible.
RolyPolys like to live in places where there is a lot of rotting material for them to dine on or under rotting material near the plants they dine on.
I try to keep rotting material away from my beds in a compost pile all by itself. This seems to help with earwigs as well.

i have seen what plantnutga is talking about. roly polys ate my healthy iris as well. i ended up using triazinon. maybe it's because we are hotter and drier and roly polys like moisture and the iris was all there was. here in texas this year the leaves i collected for making compost last year are still leaves. there has been very little rain.

http://www.livingwithbugs.com/sow_bug.html
http://ohioline.osu.edu/hyg-fact/2000/2151.html

I think that you are probably right mamajack. Both of these sites say that composting material AND/OR moisture can cause congregations of these critters.

It doesn't happen in our compost piles but if we did leave a pile of leaves (not even a big one - just a few) on the ground, we'd find the roly poly's, earwigs and slugs. Actual compost gets much too hot for them to survive - 160 degrees.

Our neighbor has an outdoor covered rubber container with household waste like coffee grounds, banana skins, NOT true compost at all, and she gets slugs the size of small snakes. No thanks!

Speaking of sowbugs, I just harvested a cantaloupe that had about 20 of the darned critters in a hole they had chewed out on the bottom. I have lost several plants over the years due to these varmints.

As for cutting back irises, I used to do that annually for control of leaf spot. Now I concentrate on removing the older leaves throughout the year as they begin to look tired. That seems to be working better for me. Usually a yank will take them off and no shearing is needed. The new growth is occasionally sprayed with a fungicide when conditions are right for leaf spot. I also try to remove any dead matter around the rhizomes. Cutting back the foliage each year seemed to decrease the blooms considerably.
Toxi

btw when I was on the internet learning more than I wanted to about rolly pollys it said that they are loosely related to shrimp.

doesn't that sound yummy?

Maybe they would have been tasty sprinkled on top of the cantaloupe, LOL

EEEEUUUWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Toxi, I like your ideas. That way it should not inhibit the growth of the plant since the leaves are the food manufacturers. It also allows you to do the work a little all along instead of breaking your back for three days running every fall. Also should keep the nasty leaves out on a continuing basis.

Kay

So I should be cutting the leaves on all irises down to 2" now, am I getting that right?

I was thinking of messenger-ing them once more -- if I cut them back to 2", can I still use messenger?