Re: CULT: iris companion plants

Donald and others in hot climates--true for us too, but somewhat less
so--probably profit greatly from the reduced heat of the soil and less
reflected excess light upward onto the iris.

I think that is why Portulaca were helpful.  I intend to try them.

I have tried Creeping Phlox, which bloom with the SDB's.  The first year it
was beautiful.  This summer, I discovered the "companion plant" was a darned
poor companion--was a hog gobbling up everything, and the SDB's nearly died
out!  I pulled a whole lot of the Phlox out and let it shade the ground as
dying mulch rather than rooted companion.

I've also tried some annual poppies.  They also competed with the iris too
much.

However, one companion (not plant) that does seem to help is a layer of rock!
My soil is about 1/2 stone of various size pieces, and when raked out into the
surface or screened out (making marvelous path covers graded for size, big on
bottom, then smaller, then smallest on top) improves the soil enormously--more
active root-zone space.  The rock on the surface acts as a heat sink too,
distributing the energy of insolation over more hours--helping the iris to
have optimum soil temps over a lot longer period of time.  Also--they're not
bad looking.  The salmon pink to rust colors on the rock surface, especially
in the zone with a vein of a heavy white rock--quartz or quartzite,
perhaps--runs right through the middle of one of the beds.  One two-foot
boulder emerged as I prepared the bed.  It is a "sculpture" gracing the garden
now.

Another bed had an entire ledge with up to 300 or 400 lb. rocks that a pair of
rock bars, and two full days of inching the whoppers upward a little bit at a
time resulted in a rather colorful array of rocks "artistically" arranged
between the iris and the tractor-mower on the lawn.  The colors are almost the
complement of the iris green foliage.  Very attractive until the rocks begin
to develop layers of moss and start turning deep gray-black from sun.

Neil Mogensen  z 7  western NC mountains

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