Re: TB: CULT: HYB: Rotters and Ramblings
- Subject: Re: TB: CULT: HYB: Rotters and Ramblings
- From: L* M*
- Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 12:22:10 -0400
<g>
If I am the Soft Rot Queen, you have got to be the Botrytis Rot (uh, oh,
I don't know if Char is a girl or boy's name - short for
Charity?)..Anyway, I had to laugh when I read your post - sympathetic
laughter. Been there (with soft rot), done that.
Yesterday, after going to look at the tag end of gorgeous bloom at Jim &
Ruth Ennenga's iris patch about 50 miles from here (on top of a broad
low hill in a much wider valley than mine), I was ready to hang a sign
over my gate ' ...abandon hope all ye [irises] who enter here..'
Most soft rot here is secondary to either (1) freeze (and I mean serious
freeze below 25oF for more than 5 hours) while irises are growing
(either mid-winter warm, rainy spell or mid-spring) or (2) drought.
This year, I had both. All the cultivars I've tried to grow that are
prone to soft rot are long since dead. I have a lovely picture I'm
going to post to Iris-photos of one of my 'best' beds of irises. Folks
on top of hills escaped the worst of the freeze damage this year and
only saw stunted stalks, a few deformed flowers, and smaller blooms.
I'm not sure whether or not the stunted stalks are only caused by the
sudden freezes, or if drought contributes.
Drought and heat as stalks are elongating and flowers opening definitely
reduces the size of blooms in many recent cultivars I've tried. I don't
remember ever seeing this in an un-named weed, but maybe everybody threw
those away a long time ago, or at least didn't pass them along to
others.
Yesterday, I was ready to plow the whole mess up and start over with
just 4 or 5 of my very best growers & reliable bloomers (known &
unknown, recent & historic) but then I found an intentional pod on one
of my seedlings, had a huge jolt of adrenaline from excitement and am
back reading catalogs wondering how to figure out what, if anything,
will live here.....
But really, this fits the definition of nuts - doing the same thing over
and over again expecting different results...
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
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