CULT: rotting rhizomes
- To: iris-talk
- Subject: CULT: rotting rhizomes
- From: L* M*
- Date: Wed, 27 Sep 2000 14:34:31 -0400
I have to share my most recent tale of neglect. We have our main annual
rhizome sale in mid-June to coincide with the daylily show and sale. It
is often hot and soggy that time of year, as it was this year. A couple
of club members brought me a plastic grocery baggie each with about a
dozen nice fat soggy rhizomes as gifts. I carefully made sure my car
was parked in the shade, put the baggies in the rear footwell to keep
them as cool as possible, opened the windows a bit and there they say
all day. Unpacked them from the car as soon as I got home and planted
them out the next day just in time for a good shower. They all did
fine.
Then about a month later, when I finally got around to emptying all the
junk out of the car, I found another baggie with a dozen rhizomes (I had
forgotten a gift from another club member that had gotten buried under
some of the junk before I got home). My car sits in a big parking lot
at work, fully exposed to the sun, & I usually forget to open the
windows. Highs were in the mid to upper 90s most of that time. I hate
to imagine what the temps were in that car! All looked a bit worse for
wear, but none rotted away, and all seem to have recovered and are
growing well with no further attention other than putting them in pots
for several weeks in partial shade to rehydrate them..
Now, whether all will bloom as well next spring is another story all
together - they dont' need to be out of the ground that long so soon
after bloom.
Sooo, once again, the cultivar matters (these were all varieties that
had grown well enough in local club members' gardens to produce extras
for sales and swaps, so had already demonstrated their toughness).
However, given the heat wave in the southwest this year, even toughness
has its limits, & these might well have stewed in a mailbox cooking in
110oF temps!.
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
> The weather where they came from was very rainy that year, and although they were kept as
> dry as possible during transport (I assume the post office kept them dry), but they could not keep out the
> humidity. Then when the rhizomes arrived here in Phoenix, it was unseasonably hot, and they were placed in
> our mail box in the hot sun and sat there and baked until I got home from work. Needless to say, these
> rhizomes did not make it and they looked like hell when I unpacked them.
>
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