Re: Re:CULT: late season planting?

Hmm.. more food for thought - thanks, Betty.

You are right about the texture difference being a potential problem.
Plus there's another issue with the pot contents: Phil Williams mentioned once when Julie Allen and I drove over to view his irises during bloom season that he'd had problems when he'd used a buried manure layer under his irises. The manure was well below the root zone, but critters were uprooting his irises digging down to get to the worms and grubs in the manure layer. I've had the same experience here and am always careful to remove the rotted manure layer from the bottom of all my big pots when transplanting to the garden.
Not only is the bottom half or so of the pots full of rotting manure, the rest is potting mix - combination of storebought fine textured stuff with well decomposed manure/compost from prior years. The roots usually hold the manure together pretty well, but not the loose potting mix.
So I wouldn't be able to pop them right into the ground now, but wouldn't worry about lining them out bare root in March. One year, Christy Hensler sent me some rhizomes from Oregon in late March, trimmed roots and tops, that went on to bloom and survived the trip. They were tough ones, for sure, but so are these re-selects.
There are a few that are potted in "soil" - rebloomers dug out of the garden in fall, brought in for winter bloom one or two winters ago, and never replanted.
I always plant in the gravel with rhizomes covered with soil, now with chip mulch on top of that. With all the gravel, it doesn't wash away, but that would be different in the "real" soil, which is more erosive. Lots of silt - probably silty clay loam. 
--
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
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