Iris are among my favorites — the (almost) perfect ‘set ’em and forget ’em’ flower, in every color except true red. Thank you, ace photographer & estimable gardener Ozark Hillbilly!
It was a good year for my Irises. Thought I’d share a few pics with the Jackaltariat.
The Dime Store Irises are so called because one can get them damned near anywhere.
I like the Yellow one but the other 2 [including top photo] are a little too gaudy for my tastes.
I got the Double Date and Brief Beauty Irises at the MO Botanical Garden Iris show.
The Salmon Pink Iris, I am unsure of where I got it from. I’ve had it for a couple years and this is the first time it bloomed. I think I’m in love.
My white iris was a no show this year, made me sad. This last pic is just Percy photo bombing my pics as he always does…
***********
The unseasonably mild winter actually played hell with our irises. A bunch of the Spousal Unit’s favorite dwarf varieties disappeared entirely (I suspect varmints), and the others — including the indestructible generic ‘van Gogh’ irises — just aren’t blooming with their usual vigor. But there’s always *next* spring…
So far (largely by accident), I’ve kept my resolve; only ten mail-order tomato plants in the rootpouches this year. Most of them are starting to set blossoms, and I need to install the tomato ladder supports later today.
What’s going on in your gardens, this week?
Baud
Very pretty, OZ.
raven
Great pix! We’re dead in the water with garden girl’s back problems. We’ve tried to hire someone to help her with mixed success and I’m useless.
Baud
@Baud: OZ = OH.
NotMax
@Baud
“Toto, I don’t think we’re in Sandusky anymore.”
:)
Jeffg166
Iris are so pretty and fleeting.
I pulled some radishes and ate them yesterday. They are not something I would actually buy or eat usually. They grow fast. That’s why I planted them.
pieceofpeace
Lovely!
satby
Great pics as always Ozark! My iris did great this year too, after last year’s mostly no show disappointment. I have three of the same as you: pictures 4, 5, and 6. My others are mostly orange and some rust combos, with a smattering of purple versions that were always the bonus for my order. I had a beautiful yellow iris which I apparently gave to my neighbor for her now stunning display, but failed to save one for me. I’m going to suggest she needs to thin hers this fall 😉
satby
My gladiola and canna pots are showing some shoots already. The tomatoes have mostly tripled in size and a couple have flowers. This week promises to be cooler, so I can get back outside and rearrange where I want all those pots to go. Lots of rose buds, and some have bloomed, so I need to get them dusted too.
Lapassionara
Very lovely. Thanks for posting these.
my azaleas failed to bloom this year. I have done my research (snark tag) and it could be about 8 or so reasons, one of which is unusually cold weather, which we had just before Christmas.
anybody else have that problem this year?
satby
@Lapassionara: I had one bloom and two that didn’t. I attributed it to the late hard freeze we got here, even though I covered both of the ones that didn’t bloom. The one that did is bigger and in a sheltered corner near the house.
Dorothy A. Winsor
Lovely. The iris is my favorite flower.
Lapassionara
@satby: thanks. I’m glad I’m not the only one who had this problem
Ken
@satby: I am happy to say my roses (well, the ones at church, but I’m the one who takes care of them) have started blooming.
As usual, after I pruned them back I was terrified that I had killed them, but they’ve grown back nicely. I always tell myself “Plants evolved in an environment with insects and goats, they can cope with pruning.”
I have also taken the very wise advice given here a few weeks ago, and decided to allow the drainage basin to
fill with weedsprovide an environment of hardy wildflowers to encourage pollinators.laura
There’s 4 yards of 50/50 topsoil compost arriving at 7:00 am tomorrow. I’ll have all the cardboard sheet mulching in place by sundown tonight. There’s seeds, half a dozen Annie’s Annuals and 2 mjs ready to plant.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
Baud
@rikyrah:
Good morning.
satby
@laura: Similar job on my to-do list this week before the back bed gets completely out of control again this summer. Much as I love raspberries, I’ve decided to just eradicate the back bush that escaped the barrel planter and keeps invading the flower beds next to it. The work hasn’t been worth the few pints of berries.
satby
@rikyrah: good morning 🙋
Anne Laurie
@raven: You can achieve a surprising amount of yard work sitting down, with a little planning. Since our yard is so small, I just drag a cheap plastic patio chair around, but there are some very nice ‘rolling work seats’ available now. (I’ve also gotten very fond of Gardeners Supply’s rubber mulch mats, to reduce mowing/mulching on pathways, and also for those hard-to-weed patches around shrubs.)
Your good lady probably already knows about adaptive gardening, but as we Boomers get older & more brittle, there are more techniques and products introduced every year to let us keep doing what we love…
Barbara
I love irises. We go for the mostly standard color, because they naturalize without serious effort on our part.
I’m trying to fill in for some gaps in my pollinator space this weekend, with heliopsis, lobelia and asters.
I definitely have moved on from the “Everything Everywhere All At Once” approach to gardening.
Barbara
@Anne Laurie: I’m going to look into these, but I have to say that my husband’s tactic of staking empty dog food or garden mulch bags where you don’t want anything to grow is a lot cheaper. We also cut cardboard boxes to size to distribute between plants, and that’s effective too.
Anne Laurie
@Barbara: Absolutely! But I’m lazy / disorganized, and ours is a very small, street-facing yard…
Kay
Flags! The old fashioned name for iris which I love. Pretty.
I’m gardening in MI now – quite a ways north from what I’m used to. I haven’t really started yet apart from fixing a low wall that was tumbling on one end.
I have a great selection of shade trees in the front – a beech, an oak, a sycamore and a sweet gum. The oak and sycamore will be huge and this is a city lot so one of them has to go – will be the oak- it’s younger and smaller. There are scraggly and struggling hollies so I’ll take them out and keep the giant rhododendron. I want to add three crabapples in the back but it’s too late for spring planting so I will order them for fall – Prairie Fire is the variety.
kalakal
Iris* love it here in west central Fl, throw a bit of one at the ground, wait a while and you have a happy, healthy plant.
Flag, Walking, and African types do really well.
* Not the Bearded ones, I think they find it too hot and humid
SkyBluePink
Beautiful! Iris are my favorites. Mine did well this year.
My indulgence this year are several Japanese iris.
Gvg
Two things. In a non garden thread, Cole himself announced that he was going to visit his his intended out in Tempe Arizona I think this summer and was going to help her do something to make her back “yard” more of a useable space while he was there. She is not interested in gardening and it apparently is desert or close to it area. He solicited group help for ideas as a project. He was told to ask here but I don’t see that he has yet. I will try to locate the thread.
I am nearing retirement, love gardening but could see that my mother needed to cut back on her ambitions in gardening and wouldn’t…anyway I have been planning this garden to be ready for less work within a few years from the time I bought the house. Trying to get shrubs planted that only grow the right height, lots of perennials etc, trying to get paths built before I can’t do things anymore. Sloping uneven ground can be a problem. I want more outdoors lighting. The kicker I didn’t want is my moms health may force them to move to an easier house or assisted living and then I might need to move again to be closer…that would blow up my plan. I can see lots of things my mom could do to simplify her gardening but she just won’t yet. The weeds are kind of out of control there and I can’t get over there enough wile managing my own and my job plus my own arthritis has been painful lately. By retirement I want a garden that is pretty but low maintenance. Earlier if possible. I need the rest but I also need to look at beauty.
Barbara
@Gvg: We haven’t done this in a while, but we used to get a landscaping company to come a few times a season to clean things up. Let’s just say they did more work in four hours than we would have accomplished in a month of weekends. It was worth whatever they charged, and good maintenance can help avoid the expense of replanting and replacing.
Kristine
@Kay: I have a Prairie Fire–the deep magenta blossoms are gorgeous.
It grew bigger than I thought it would when I had it planted too close to a Louisa crabapple way back in 2004 or 2005. I can’t estimate height fer beans, but I’m guessing it’s 12-15′ high with an equivalent spread. It’s intermingled on one side with the Louisa, resulting in lopsided growth for both. If I could only go back 18 years and have them planted 10′ farther apart….
narya
I dragged some plants out onto the porch yesterday (I always balk, because I hate dragging them back in in the fall)–the kalanchoe, a couple of aloe, the pole bean plant (I don’t remember what bean it was), and the lavender. And the squirrels left enough nasturtium seeds for THEM to start growing, too; I have the nasturtiums (nasturtia?) planted with flax, so I’m hoping the flowers complement each other. I did rein myself in this year and avoided buying way more seeds than I have boxes in which to plant them . . . and I still have lots of stuff coming up.
Kristine
Lovely irises, Ozark. Thanks for the photos!
My irises exploded nicely. I have a single variety–pretty sure it’s a heritage called Alcazar. I found some corms a few years ago on the site of a house that had been demolished decades before. Year One, I had a handful of blooms. Over the last couple of years, hundreds.
I had to deal with iris brown spot a couple of years ago. Copper fungicide did the trick. Lots of copper fungicide. I still occasionally see a spot or two, so I give the leaves a defensive dousing.
Native columbine are winding down. Ninebark are flowering and the wild hydrangea are forming corymbs. Most of Lake County is officially at Moderate Drought stage. No rain predicted around here until next Saturday, a mere 0.2″ that could easily fizzle. The shade garden is so lovely and green but those ferns and astilbes need some drenching rains.
JPL
Thank you for the flowers, and they are beautiful!
Between February warm days and March’s deep freeze, I lost a lot of plants. All my Indian Hawthorn have died and now I have to decide what to replace it with. Local peach growers have lost their entire crops so my problems are minor.
MagdaInBlack
Iris blooming everywhere here, so I was fully expecting an iris post today. Thank you Ozark, they are my favorite. I favor your Salmon Pink ones best.
Kay
@Kristine:
Thanks. Good to know. The size matters a lot in this use so maybe I’ll look again. They may be too big to group in the way I want. I’m not doing any foundation plantings or formal flower beds in this garden- it will be much simpler than my Ohio garden. The trees will be the focus – the existing shade trees in the front and the (new) flowering trees in the back. I’m keeping a huge rhododendron just because it’s huge and I can’t grow them in Ohio – my soil is too alkaline there- but that will be the only shrub. The MI garden will be basically trees, brick and ground covers – ferns, lily of the valley and hosta.
Mike in Oly
LOVE the irises. I recognize the classic Coronation in the set. Easy to spot with her dainty blooms and scattering of purple freckles around the beard. Super hardy and grows everywhere in the US. My irises were fantastic this season, tho it was an odd bloom season. It was cold late then jumped right into the 80s so everything was delayed then bloomed all at once. Great show and it is still going on as half my bed decided to start well after the other half. I’m heading up to Tacoma today to man the local iris society booth at the Flower and Garden Festival at Pt. Defiance Park. Stop and say hi if you are there!
satby
@Gvg: Someone mentioned that to Quinnerly, who’s moved to NM and is learning desert gardening.
I got nothing to offer as assistance, I struggle with the sandy soil here and we’re not a desert. I cope by planting in raised beds with real soil, but it rains here, so that’s doable.
Maybe O Felix Culpa may be able to suggest some things, as she’s also in the southwest.
satby
@Gvg: @Barbara: best money I ever spent was to hire landscapers for a day of hard clearing / trimming. Both times they cleared out in 2 hours or less what it would take me days to do. It also helped that both happened not to be allergic to poison ivy, which grows like kudzu around here.
Kristine
@Kay: One thing that more experienced gardeners warned me about was that dwarf shrubs and trees often don’t remain dwarf. They need to be pruned/managed pretty regularly and even then it may not matter.
MomSense
Very pretty, OH. My irises just bloomed but they are getting soaked with rain. Hopefully the blooms will last.
O. Felix Culpa
@satby: Thanks for thinking of me. :)
There were lots of good suggestions for JC and Joelle in the original thread. My advice would be to keep it simple and/or hire help to do any heavy lifting. Do not plant Russian Sage; it’s wildly invasive. I do a combination of in-ground and container planting, which reduces cost and labor somewhat. I favor native, pollinator plants to attract bees and hummingbirds. Conveniently, hummingbird feeders form part of the decor. (Do NOT buy the red-dyed liquid; make your own nectar, 4 parts water to 1 part sugar). Growing the Southwest Garden can provide additional info on design and plants.
Manyakitty
@Anne Laurie: this looks like a great resource. Added it to my bookmarks. Thanks!!