Chuck,

I think something like this is likely. But how do you find out if there is a weather station near?

>  If you have a weather station near you  you could check on minimum temeratures. Or I could look at it. Just let me know of weather station nearest to you with recorded temerature data.

I've been trying to find out without any success. The two weather sites I keep up with on the internet have National Weather Service radar from two places. One is San Angelo, TX and the other is Fort Worth, TX. Both locations are more than 100 miles from me. In the details for these, using my zip and the zip from the town nearest me they use data from small municipal airports. One of those is 40 or so miles north and the other is 40 or more miles south. Neither would be especially accurate for my location. Since my location is in a river valley that goes through the county, I'm not sure even a station within 2-7 miles from me would be accurate much of the time. The official temps tend to be off by 4+ degrees one way or the other. I actually use a western zip rather than mine on one site because it tends to be more accurate for winter temps.

Still, even beyond that I think there may be modifying factors. Raised beds for one thing. For whatever reason, those seem to have a tendency to promote growth as if they were warmer than the surrounding area. I would have thought the opposite, but in fact those in the raised beds tend to exhibit growth sooner and the resulting bloomstalk formation earlier. Don't know why that's so, but it's been consistent. How long the plants tend to get buried in my annual oak leaf crop also tends to promote bloomstalk growth sooner. That makes more sense to me. Another factor is pushing seedlings. Here a seedling really only has a chance of survival if it gets regular doses of supplemental water. Those that come up as strays among the regular iris beds generally don't, and I really do mean rarely, survive. The extra care new seedlings get often pushes them into a lot of growth with subsequent increase. The timing and age of that increase seems to be one factor on whether or not it blooms. Some crosses are more apt to do this than others. I see more 'near' bloomouts than actual bloomouts due to a late increase that doesn't bloom. That's nearly as aggravating as actual bloomout because it may take several years then for that increase to make a clump. That's probably due to no longer being treated to the additional water the first year seedling beds receive. After the first year, a seedling here is pretty much on its own in that regard and the subsequent slower growth due to the natural growing conditons slows the rate of increase if it survives at all.

None of which really helps me salvage one that blooms out, though. I've tried, but success has not been very common. It doesn't seem as likely to be a genetic factor on some since the initial plant often puts on a generous amount of increase. The process of producing a bloomstalk does seem to turn that off most of the time.

Donald Eaves
d*@eastland.net
Texas Zone 7b, USA