 And irises are one of the most popular and beautiful flowers. How to grow them here Tucson in today's five-minute gardener. Live with balanced news you can count on. This is News 4-4. Well this weekend in Southern Arizona it should be absolutely perfect for getting out and working in the yard. September is the month to get a lot of those fall flowers planted one in particular. Good afternoon it's Debbie Mounce the five-minute gardener from Harlow Gardens. Today I want to talk to you guys about bearded iris. Bearded iris are one of those things that all of us have memories of. From when we were kids they're beautiful. They kind of have an elegance about them. We remember them in our grandma's gardens and our aunties gardens. Whether back Easter here they do really well. And I'm going to talk to you today about them. I actually did my own digging in my garden yesterday. I dug out a bunch of rhizomes for you guys so I could show you what you needed to learn about bearded iris. And I brought my iris from home so you can see what they look like. This is a rhizome that I dug out of the ground yesterday. And this is the time of year when you can start digging out those rhizomes and dividing them out. You can do that anywhere from July into the end of September. And the time to plant those iris rhizomes is when the temperatures during the day are hovering in the low 90 degrees. So generally you would say towards the end of September beginning of October is an absolutely ideal time to get these guys in the ground. And this is a little rhizome and it's still got some little roots on it. And I've trimmed it up a little and trimmed out the roots a little and I'll show you how to do that later. But this little guy what you want to do I'm going to plant it in a pot. But you can plant them in the pots or you can also plant them in the ground whichever you prefer. You want the flat part of the leaf this side and that side to be facing east and west. These guys need at least six hours of full sun. They like the heat and they need it in order to bloom. So you can plant them. You only put about an inch of soil on top of that rhizome and you'll notice as you start to water and let those old roots anchor that rhizome. And as you start to water some of that soil will disappear off the top of the rhizome and that's okay. If the rhizome ends up getting exposed that is not a problem at all. So if you're facing these guys oh one thing I forgot to do is I forgot to sprinkle let me do this again real quick. I forgot to put a little bit of triple super phosphate in the bottom. This is going to help with the bloom so we're going to just tuck that right back in there. And then you just water it in really well. And you want to water them about twice a week thoroughly and you're all set for your fabulous spring bloom. That's wonderful. Thanks for being with us, Debbie. Now you call them rhizomes. They're kind of like tulips right they come from bulbs. Yeah there's a family of plants that are grown from kind of a bulbous type growth. And these are called rhizomes and tulips are called bulbs. They're all kind of lumped together as a bulb family but really technically these are actually rhizomes. So you'll be able to get irises every year. You can get irises every year once you plant them. And I want to show you guys today in the studio how to divide these. Now the one that showed on the piece was one that I had already pulled out and I had already trimmed up. But this is what they actually look like when I pulled them out of the ground. Now this is the mama rhizome. This is what I call the mama rhizome. And this one is the one. This would be like the one that I initially planted. Now this one she'll bloom from one maybe two years and then she's done. Then her job is just like us mommies is to produce babies. These are the babies. So what you do is you just take the babies right off. They just pull right off. And you toss the mama away. Oh I know. But it's true you take up all the dried stuff and you just cut the leaves back. Oh by two about six inches or so. And you can even cut some of these roots because these roots aren't viable anymore. They're going to produce new roots, new viable roots. These guys are just there to anchor them in. But you do this about every two to three years. And you water these in Tucson how often. In the summertime twice a week and you water them thoroughly. Water them all the way to the bottom of the rhizome and let them dry out all the way to the top of the rhizome. Before you water them again. Then we're going to have to put them in the end of September. When can we expect to see some bloom? In spring. Bearded iris depending upon the variety will start blooming generally. Late February in through the end of March the beginning of April into the middle of April. It just depends upon which variety it is. But I do have to confess that the iris I had on TV were fake. They because they're not blooming in the garden at this time. So I resorted to kind of underhanded methods and brought in silk iris. But they were very good. They were. Thank you so much. They're beautiful.