TB: CULT: Cutting Spent Stalks

My own experience is like Anner Whitehead's.  Different varieties differ,
however, and sometimes the stalks snap better bent over toward the toe,
others with the stalk bent the other way.  A short, sharp snap does the job
better than a slow motion one, also as Anner suggested.

One problem is that on first year plants, some are not well enough rooted,
and the whole plant comes out of the ground, or the mother rhizome comes out
with the stalk, leaving the increases in place.  Those breaks are also clean
ones like what Anner describes as between stalk and rhizome.  I often
replant the mother rhizome next to the increases, as it sometimes sends up a
shoot or two from the toe.

The same thing can happen in clumps too long in one place, where the
rhizomes are climbing over one another.  A whole increase set may come out
with the stalk.  In this case, one is doing the clump a favor, and the
increase set popped out is a good beginning for a new plant.

I've rarely had this happen in the past as it was my practice to reset
annually right after bloom--at least within the first six weeks.

Here in NC I haven't been able to do that more than twice thanks to my
enforced "vacation" from productive physical work.  Now I've run out of
available ground and have to cull out varieties for which I have fondness,
but am not currently using in a breeding program, the boundary I've set for
what to keep, what not.  So I clear a space, try to "renew" it and replant.
My soil has had iris in it for five consecutive years now, and that's not a
happy thing, as vigor and health of the reset plants is not what it should
be, and I haven't identified the limiting factor, nutritional or otherwise.

Neil Mogensen  z 7  Reg 4  western NC mountains

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