Re: planting time

--- laurief <laurief@paulbunyan.net> wrote:

 
> Ellen, I believe we made that exchange in May rather than
> July, didn't 
> we?  I remember having to do a bit of convincing for an early
> spring 
> trade.  ;-)  I didn't want a repeat of the sort of wholesale
> death I had 
> the year before when I planted Sibs in the heat.  

Ah, maybe I did sent your plants in May...you see, 'we' don't
get the hot weather you do in you section of N. America. We
rarely get above a maximum of 85 F(rarely) here. We have gotten
to 90 F in July but that is not a common occurence. Heat is not
our problem in this altitude. Frost is more of a problem in May
and Sept. than high temps. in July. 


Ellen 

The plants
> you sent 
> last year settled in beautifully, btw.
> >
> >**The conventional wisdom tells most of us that planting
> should
> >be done before or after summer.
> 
> In 2002, I purchased 67 Sibs from 5 different growers.  They
> all arrived 
> in fine and healthy condition.  Unfortunately (and stupidly),
> I ordered 
> them later in the spring than I should have, and they all
> arrived about a 
> week before our temps hit 90+ degrees and stayed hot on and
> off 
> throughout the summer.  Shortly after planting, most of the
> Sibs went 
> what I *hoped* was completely dormant in the heat, losing all
> their 
> leaves and never regrowing any new ones.  I watered them
> consistently and 
> heavily all summer and continued to hope that in spite of
> their apparent 
> dormancy, they'd pop back to life in the spring of '03. 
> Didn't happen.  
> Of the 67 planted in '02, only 16 were still alive last
> spring, and most 
> (if not all) of those 16 never went "dormant" after planting.
> OUCH!
> 
> Since then, I have read warnings in a couple of growers'
> culture sheets 
> that Sibs should not be planted less than a month before 90
> degree temps. 
> From what I understand, Sibs will not grow new roots when
> temps exceed 90 
> degrees.  What I now assume happened to my '02 transplants was
> that the 
> heat prevented them from rooting in, and with all the water I
> was giving 
> them, they just sat there and rotted instead.
> 
> I learned that lesson the hard way, and in '03 I was much more
> successful 
> with my beardless purchases.  I had my first order delivered
> in early 
> spring when Sib foliage had just barely broken ground here and
> we were 
> still having frosty nights.  Those new additions never missed
> a beat, 
> never lost a leaf, and several of them (versicolors, not Sibs)
> even 
> amazed me with bloom just a couple months after planting! 
> 
> In mid-August, I received another Sib order and was very
> nervous because 
> our temps were still above 90 (way late for that sort of heat
> here).  I 
> knew if I planted them out in the beardless bed, they'd be
> dead within a 
> week.  I opted, instead, to pot them up and keep the pots in a
> kiddie 
> pool holding a couple inches of water in a shaded area on the
> north side 
> of the house where they stayed as cool as possible.  There
> they remained 
> until late October when I removed the pots from the pool and
> buried them 
> along the west side of the house foundation for the winter.
> Most of the 
> potted Sibs lost a lot of their leaves, but none went
> completely dormant. 
>  Early next spring when the Sibs start to send up foliage,
> I'll dig up 
> the pots, unpot the Sibs, and plant them in the beardless bed.
> 
> Since I really don't care to fuss with potting late arrivals
> again, I'll 
> will be ordering Sibs exclusively in early spring from now on.
>  That's 
> clearly the most successful timing for my garden ... so far,
> anyway.
> 
> Laurie
> 
> 
> 
> -----------------
> laurief@paulbunyan.net
> http://www.geocities.com/lfandjg/
> http://www.angelfire.com/mn3/shadowood/irisintro.html
> USDA zone 3b, AHS zone 4 - northern MN
> acidic clay soil
> 
> 



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