Re: CULT: survival and list

LOL - my "standards" are set by my physical/mental limits and
personality.

<After several years of this, have you ever considered lowering your
                     standards, as it were?  >

Well, sort of.  My interest has always been to find irises that will
thrive for me.  Period.  I started daubing my own out of frustration
over not being able to easily find modern irises that would grow like
pallida and other tough oldies.  It's all Clarence's Mahan and Sharon
McAllister's fault <g>, for encouraging me.

And it's not just for my own pleasure and information - I share
seedlings and information with other hybridizers and gardeners
interested in survivors, and get offlist notes fairly often thanking me
for sharing names of cultivars that do well here.  Generally, what
thrives for me, thrives elsewhere in the "death zone".  Not always, but
usually.

<As I have understood you, your interest has been to test, at an
extreme, for
  your own pleasure and information, and also to select stock for a
personal
   breeding program, the goal of which is to develop irises with modern
form and  color which can survive the conditions in your locality, and
your own   horticultural style. >

I've posted some photos of those "few" that do quite well here.  Cheated
a bit by using photos from the last two years, when we've escaped the
usual late killing freezes, but at least these are cultivars that
survive/thrive in our summers.

And they do get care, just not the level of care that some are
willing/able to provide - I do try to keep the weeds away from them for
the first year, to give them a chance to get well established, and I do
run out with my 10 100ft long rolls of Reemay & equivalent every spring
to protect as many as I can from late freezes.  Plus I spray as often as
possible down the row middles with Roundup and hand pull within the rows
at least twice a year.  I dig excess rhizomes for our annual club sales
(like they say, if you don't share, they won't bloom), and fertilize &
lime twice a year.

Any disease/caregiving is a spinoff from the biodiversity of plants and
habitats the weeds and insect predators provide.  I accidentally
"pulled" a fat little toad along with a handful of weeds yesterday.  He
peed all over me.  Yuck!

< It seems to me that very few highly developed garden plants are likely
to
   persist with no care, and fewer still thrive, nor is it clear to me
they should
 be expected to do so. >

Anner, I have a lot, and do have the data, but going thru it, updating &
giving you a number for 5 yr survival is a winter project.  Remind me
later if I forget.  Rough estimate - 16 to 20 rows with maybe 80?
cultivars each, wild guess half alive and thriving, who knows how long
I've had most of them.  Started collecting in 1970s & still have several
from that era, several hundred seedlings now.

< I am curious; how many bearded Iris cultivars of the half that
survived the
  first year are still with you, and doing well, at the five year point?
Have you
   a list of those names handy?     Cordially,   Anner Whitehead>

--
Linda Mann east Tennessee USA zone 7/8
East Tennessee Iris Society <http://www.korrnet.org/etis>
American Iris Society web site <http://www.irises.org>
talk archives: <http://www.hort.net/lists/iris-talk/>
photos archives: <http://www.hort.net/lists/iris-photos/>
online R&I <http://www.irisregister.com>

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