RE: RE: Zone 6a and borer control

Hi,
I have been overdoing the merit just a bit.  (4 Tablespoons per 10 sq feet
or a 5 setting on a hand grass seed spreader from Scott's)(I don't want to
handle the merit.)  I hit the garden as late as I can before snow.
Listening every day to the news/weather for snow predictions, and then again
before the 6 months are up in the spring.  I try to put the white grub
control down when the ground is slightly wet so it does not blow away.  This
past year I hit the garden after I had planted my purchased Iris and again
in late fall.
I have felt that the chance of importing Borers is great and the less than
$15 cost to hit the garden an extra time is worth it to me.  I have yet to
see an adverse effect in three years.
I also wash my purchases with a bleach solution, 1 to 10.

I had two clumps that I dug last summer with borers and no evidence through
out the garden for other clumps that might have been infested.  I made a
decision when I started digging to go for the ones that looked suspicious
and dug them first, replanting healthy Rhizomes in a new place.

Char in New Berlin, WI

-----Original Message-----
From: owner-iris@hort.net [o*@hort.net] On Behalf Of Linda
Bartell
Sent: Tuesday, February 01, 2005 12:48 PM
To: iris@hort.net
Subject: [iris] RE: Zone 6a and borer control

Betty W. - A few additional good rebloomers for me here in the greater
Detroit area are SENORITA FROG (SDB - Spoon), FOREVER BLUE (SDB - Chapman),
FOREVER VIOLET (MDB - Chapman), AGAIN AND AGAIN (TB - Innerst), PERSIMMON
PIE (BB - Spoon), and MIDSUMMER'S EVE (BB - Spoon).  As I told Annette in a
separate post, I was too busy potting up pieces of my many irises last fall
(we had our house up for sale) to properly tend my rebloomers.  The house is
off the market now (I'm delighted to say!), and I'm investing in a Mantis in
the fight against the Michigan clay soil.  After bloom in the garden AND in
my gazillion pots, I'll be rototilling in tons of compost and replanting
everything. The improved soil should help 'all' the irises, and I suspect
with earlier application of liquid fertilizer for the remontants that didn't
get past bloomstalk stage last fall, I'll have better results in the future.
 
Neil M. - Laurie Frazer and I both have used the granular Merit (in Bayer
Grub Control for lawns) in our iris beds, although I've forgotten exactly
how much (maybe Laurie remembers?) with decent results (and I believe the
benefits of the Merit last about 6 months). The borers start their cycle,
then eventually die as they chew on the new growth.  I only found one
rhizome with borer damage last summer.  With woods behind us and a vacant
field on one side, I always have some borer damage.  This season I'm going
to keep a record of which cv's show signs of borers.
 
 
Linda Bartell

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