Okay, I got a hold of the retired teacher who planted the perennial gardens at my school. As the Garden Club is assigned the task of maintaining these, I went around with her and made a list of the plants that I don't have at home. I've never grown Irises. There are clumps of these that she says are very over grown. What should I do given that we are starting now, and they are already coming up? What would be a zone 5a schedule of maintenance of Iris? Hope someone can help.
School Garden
I'm sure you would get great info on the Iris forum. Good luck. What a great thing you are doing.
Thanks for the tip, I just posted there.
We finally had to thin out our iris last fall. It was quite a chore, but well worth it because they all look so happy and healthy this spring. We simply dug up the whole clump and brutally divided it into smaller pieces and then unceremoniously dropped them where we wanted them. If your iris are like ours, they like to have the top parts of their bulbs above ground, even in our zone.
ya know last year I bought a bunch from the iris co-op... I planted a few poking out of the ground and a few buried shallow... the covered ones look so much better than the ones above ground... so far ... I am going to see how they look this summer and might put them a tad deeper (the one might have heaved out a bit)
we divided some of ours towards the end of summer... yes I will agree it was brutal .... I am impressed with the results so far.... they are defiantly not a delicate plant
And ya can't hardly kill 'em, either! There are a lot of types of iris that like to be buried a bit. We have some of those. But the ones that were here when we bought the house seem to like a bit of a chill to be happy.
I am amazed how fast mine multiplied... they really are great flowers
Wow, this is good news. I had the idea that Iris were finicky and hard to grow. I have to say that some of the Iris in these gardens seem to be slightly above ground, but not all of them. They are certainly growing though. I'm anxious to see the flowers. So, should I wait until fall to break them up? How late? Or, when is too late?
We usually dig and split in the fall.
I was doing mine early fall... right after the real hot stuff broke... give them a chance to take root before the cold starts
not sure how late is too late... but make sure you have a strong sturdy sharp knife to cut through those suckers... some can be pretty tough
Thank you both. I'll add it to my calendar for September.
Click on the AIS site--irises.org They will give you the site for region 2 (NY) & I'm sure that people will help as AIS is oriented towards youth work. There have been schools with gardens which include iris in MO. I'm glad that you have the list of different perennials, very helpful.