Re: help please

 

Alice; I hesitate to give too much advice because I can not claim extraordinary success although i have bloomed I. paradoxa in years past. My first inclination is always to advise people to research the native growing area of a species. What works there will usually give adequate results if you can reproduce that. But often species will respond even better to garden conditions than what they have in nature. One of the great values in being members of Iris societies is that we can compare notes on what works outside the native habitat. A great project would be if someone really researched each species and discovered detailed climatic data from their native habitat. I would love to see this type of data added to the Iris Encyclopedia. But to give some sort of general answer to your question I would make this generalization. Most Oncos I have grown have little problem wi! th lots of water during the winter. It seemed to me rot only sets in when the plants are wet and the temperature is over 80 degrees. I use this as a general rule and actually begin getting nervous when the temperature is above 75. Of coarse we are not speaking of soggy poorly drained wet. A bulb frame is great because you can cover it in summer and dry it out leaving the plants in place. I had two plants of paradoxa this year. One has been was in a sand bed for three years. That piece was so small when I recieved it I believe it just has not gotten big enough to bloom. But it has shown me that growing in about a foot and a half of sand just dumped on the existing soil has not killed it. It has gotten a little larger each year and probably would do even better if I would fertilize it with low doses on a regular basis through winter and early spring. The other is in a large pot. I made a mistake this winter. The winter was so mild and the onco were growing vigorously ear! ly in the winter that I feared them being damaged when we fina! lly got some really cold days. I moved the pots into the garage and they immediately developed meally bugs. I finally decided that just leaving them to face the dramatic temperature swings would have been a better course. Even though your plants will disappear over summer in your bulb frame I bet they will prosper and do better each year, provided you can off long hot periods of wet off during the summer.

 

Hi Rodney, (it seems the new email address worked), the summer newsletter was a good read, I also enjoyed looking at the Neomarica pictures, and reading about the trip to the caucasus, so many places to go. Reading the discussion I had with Pat, Krill, and Robert, has reminded me to ask some more. I have 7 small oncos and junos I've planted in a bulb frame, for me here this seems wisest for now because of the torrential rain we can get here in summer. Some of the soil I have here is very hydrophobic,which has worked with one I've had for a while, later I may try something mounded or sloped. The small paradoxa seemed a bit limp so I watered it, can you do this in winter if a plant doesn't have a larger root system ? I'm a bit worried about the cold necessary for flowering. Up on this hill nights can reach only - 1, or dustings of frost, sometimes a bit severe, but should I pull the glass off the top to try to freeze the top layer as much as I can. Or can they thrive and fl! ower with a certain amount of cold hours per year? It's meant to snow here every 7 yrs. still waiting. One more, for Pat and Krill? there's a product called healthy earth soil builder and clay breaker, which seems to have the right minerals for these plants. I use it a lot, would this sort of thing aid flowering ? Sorry to be so long-winded, but what will produce flowers for me.
thanks, Alice

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