want tell you a little bit about growing
Iris the best time Iris should be
planted or replanted is like July August
September after the bloom socks have
died down you cut those Bloom socks off
and we're going to show you then how to
prepare those for replanting and you can
see here that we've we've done these
we've cut them off and you'll notice
they're fan shape and I'm not sure if
that's really aesthetic or whatever but
they've always done that for IR
supposedly it's when the rain hits them
it comes off the leaves and doesn't go
down and hit the ryone part and rot the
ryone you can get Iris rot um two moist
conditions but so I'm not sure if it's
just aesthetic or whatever but that's
just how they do it you need um at least
a half a day of sun for Iris to do well
they like full sh full sun unless it's
very very hot dry weather um you want to
make sure they have good drainage and
they like to they don't like wet feet so
they like to be play placed on either
slope or like a raised bed area and I'll
show you how to make a ditch when we
replant them so you can understand that
um you don't want them planted very deep
you want the risone which is the kind of
the bulb area to be exposed they like to
have their face to the sun they say um
sometimes you can cover that ryone with
like an inch of soil and through rain
weather conditions that soil then will
kind of wash off which is okay once they
get those little Roots uh established
it's fine to have that soil off the
risone you want to plant them generally
a foot 18 in apart they will um develop
little sister Ryon the mother plant then
dies out and each year they develop a
new risone and they work themselves out
outward from the base so you want to
plant them far enough apart that you
know you don't have to um what I want to
say cut and divide them in less than
three to five years so that's a little
bit about how to grow them the iris most
of that we have here in kakon county in
this area of Ohio are bearded iris and
there are several different stages of
bearded iris now the beard I cannot show
you now because it's not blooming season
but on the petal you have like a tongue
it's kind of fuzzy that sticks out
that's the beard and there are several
types of bearded iris we have according
to
um find my sheet according to the the
how tall they they
get we have uh Tall Bearded which is
everything we have in this Garden we
have intermediate bearded we have um
what we call the Border Iris the dwarf
Bearded Iris and then there are several
Iris that do not have beards there are
the Siberian Iris the spiria which is a
little Iris sometimes they have those in
um baskets and flower arrangements
you'll see those the Louisiana Iris they
like to be very wet feet in bogs you'll
see those and sometimes they can be
invasive in in areas that have a lot of
wetlands you have your Japanese Iris
which had the big blossoms on them so
those are the different kind of Iris and
next we're going to show you how to
divide the um Tall Bearded Iris that we
have here in the lock Gardens I want to
tell you a little bit about the tools we
use for dividing
Iris I have clippers
or scissors to cut the Ryon and the um
leaves off or a knife this is a guard
knife and when you use these you should
always spray them with Clorox so you
don't spread disease from one plant to
the other I I spray my tools before I
begin and then when I'm finished and
then I also use this Clorox solution
it's a 1 to 5% I use um sometimes 1 to
10 but you use your Clorox to kill those
bacteria and things that can spread the
disease on the iris Ryon I'll begin here
by
digging an iris ryone and you can see
that they are um not very deep here on
the on this bank because of the soil
here in the Lake Park is very very
rich we have a lot of other things that
have kind of grown into them so I can
just put my hand under those roots and
lift up and when I do that I come up
with a
Clump that looks like this and you will
notice this is the
main Iris ryone that began and then as
it died off then we have the sister
ryzon on the side and those we separate
and replant now this in it it just
pulled off itself which is fine you'll
see these root system
here when I replant this I take those
long roots and just cut them so I just
had the smaller ones and then I also as
I said before 4 to 6 in up on the leaves
cut it into a fan shape that way when I
replant it I will get the nutrients
going back into the risezone instead of
into the leaves now you'll notice on
some of these you have these leaf spot
this is a virus in the South it doesn't
um it's more of a hindrance than it is
here in the north we usually have cold
Winters and it kills that virus you
don't have to worry about it you'll see
some of the leaves and also part of it
is weather conditions you know dry too
wet
Etc but like I said you don't have to
really worry it doesn't disease it
doesn't harm the rise zone I'm going to
take this ryone where it come this Chute
comes off and just clip
it so this is a
new one that we will plant this is the
old bulb sometimes they have little tiny
starts on the side if you plant this you
might get it one or two but it wouldn't
be near as healthy as the side Roots
this is the bloom
stock and it has been cut back already
so we just discard
that we'll do another
one getting rid of some of
the surrounding PLS
and as I pulled this one up you see it
automatically broke off you can see the
old root sock here just break that
off use some type of a tool to cut those
off a
little and then it's natural for Iris to
lose their outer leaves that's just how
they develop and grow so these here you
can just spread down or pull off if it's
kind of pulls tugs hard I don't strip it
from the plant I just go ahead and cut
it cuz you don't want to bear that too
much so those are a couple Horizons now
we'll show you how to I'm going to cut
that back a little here now we'll show
you how to replant them when you replant
an iris you want to make sure the area
is clear from other roots and so forth
so we'll get rid of some of the Sedum
here that's in our
way now it's best to make like they like
you to make like a
hump you put the iris on top of that
with these back Roots going back and
these to the
side you take your
soil put up over that pack it good
behind because those back roots are the
ones that are going to keep the iris
upright then I just take my hand and
kind of brush that top off a little bit
because you want that face part of that
risone like I said fac in the sun they
like that to be uncovered there's like
little air nodules in the top of those
um it's hard to see on the new plants
but that so that's how you basically
replant an iris