Re: iris hts, early bloomers, and the erratic weather zone

mike -it is definitely JESSE'S SONG.  remember, this is the tb garden from
hell.  early bloomers have an especially hard time - low valley (=frost
pocket), base of a high ridge (=no morning sun), and in tennessee where all
those arctic blasts just barely get far enough south to kill fruit blossoms
nearly every year). 

comparing early bloomers - JESSE blooms every year (often with stunted
stalks).  TITANS GLORY doesn't.  i have moved JESSE farther away from the
morning shadows to soil with more clay and away from a pile of limestone
gravel.  will let you know...

some varieties seem to be temperature dormant and others seem to be daylength
dormant.  anybody else notice that?  JESSE waits for warm weather - some
years it is very early, others with late bloomers.  VICTORIA FALLS and ICE
SCULPTURE are others that wait for reasonable weather.  I. pallida blooms (or
tries to) at exactly the same tiem each spring so often doesn't bloom at all.

anybody out there willing to venture a guess as to whose genes those are and
how i can find early bloomers with that wait for better weather quality? in
the AIS popularity polls, region 7 does not rank as many early bloomers as
the nation does, which makes me think this is a problem for many of us in the
arctic plunge zone.

this freeze (around 5o tomorrow night) will be bad . freezes below 15o with
no snow cover at this time of spring (beet, spinach, and potato planting time
clarence) do them in nearly every time.

clarence - SONG OF NORWAY grows great here, but then there was the year it
suddenly decided to rot and i lost all of it.  it was a very bad year for
rot, but of my old reliables, SONG was the only one to instantly and
completely turn to slurp.  i got some more and its been fine.

linda mann e tenn usa
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