Re: CULT:potting irises

From: "Chris Hollinshead" <cris@netcom.ca>

Couple of questions, Glenn... I was particularly interested in the fact that
your experience involved the *West Coast irises... I have had consistent bad
experiences/luck with the survivability of them too with huge overwinter
losses (rot, botrytis and heaving). Most always with my TB replants, they
are heaved way out of the ground come spring... and I do mean way out! In
the Spring it looks like I didn't even bother to plant them, just threw them
onto the top of the garden bed. I have tried planting earlier but it does
not make too much difference. Letting the rhizomes dry out cuts into the
limited growing season left after receipt and correspondingly limits the
amount time left for rooting to become established prior to winter. Putting
bricks etc on top of the rhizomes overwinter to prevent heaving seems to me
to only treat the symptoms and not the cause. These things were partially
behind my reasons for considering this methodology on new acquisitions.

Now, to the questions:
1. Did you cut back the roots on these West Coast and other iris before
planting? if yes, how much?
2. What kind of medium did you pot with?
3. What would be the diameter of a 1 gallon pot? (I moved to the 6 inch dia
size for TBs)
4. How long did you keep them potted before transplanting into the garden
beds?

*West Coast iris defined in this discussion are iris that are
grown/propagated on the west coast and not necessarily confined to those
just hybridized there. My own West Coast iris were sourced from Oregon.

Look forward to comments. (Glenn, I have brought this discussion back into
the public forum of Iris Talk as I think many will be interested or benefit
from this information exchange)

Christopher Hollinshead
Mississauga, Ontario  Canada  zone6b
AIS(Region 16), CIS, SSI
Director-Canadian Iris Society
Newsletter Editor-Canadian Iris Society
E-mail:  cris@netcom.ca <c*@netcom.ca>
CIS website:  http://www.netcom.ca/~cris/CIS.html
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-------------
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Glenn Simmons [g*@swbell.net]
> Sent: Thursday, January 28, 1999 23:58
> To: cris@netcom.ca
> Subject: Re: [iris-talk] CULT:potting irises
>
>
> We used 1 gallon pots even though Walter told us to use 4 inch
> pots.  Those 4
> inch pots just didn't seem large enough!  :)  Probably around 95% of our 1
> gallon pots were root bound when we planted them in the garden.
> So far this
> winter we have only lost 3 of the iris we potted (1 being my
> fault).  Winter
> survival of new iris is the reason we approached Walter.  We were
> fearful of
> suffering large losses with the iris shipped in from California.
> This was our
> first time buying directly from the California growers and we had
> heard some
> really bad stories about survival rates.
>
>


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