Last Updated on: 15th November 2020, 10:09 pm
I’m at Shriner’s Iris gardens with Ben Shriner, and then you are actually what generation of Shriners here… A fourth-generation wow, that’s exciting! So a long history of Shriners here you know, we’ve never come for Gardener. The time has come to learn how to divide and replant Irises you’re going to choose just all about it. Okay, so you have this big clump here. So what do you got? So this is a clump, that’s been in the ground for us just one year but typically may be in the garden.
How to divide the Iris rhizomes
This would look like a one two year Iris clump, and this is about the size they get. So you get about four rhizomes right here: that have been added to this one right here. So, this one’s produced, four – okay, and so that was the one. The original rhizome was that one, and it’s made all these in the ground, and each one was going to have a flower this year right, yeah. So you can see the bloom stock on this one. This one is the one that bloomed this year right there, and then these are the ones that are going to bloom the following year, all right,
So why do we have to divide this?
It’s you know, I’m sure the more giant clumps of the Iris plant in our yards, but why do we have to do that every couple years? So they’ll spend by resuspending most of the energy reproducing themselves after a certain amount of time, unless you dig them up and divide them, so digging them up and dividing them you’ll get more blooms, Oh yeah, and that’s what we all want precisely and so here’s this clump. So do I have to get a special knife or something to divide all this or is it an easy trick? It’s pretty easy!
You can do it with your hands, You can, or you can do with a knife if you’re going to do it with a knife, you’d want to cut into the spent rhizome so cutting right there like so, and we’re not going to use That one that’s gone, No, that one You have this new increase here. So if you wanted to plant this one back, you could, but you want to get a bloom from it for a few years, and if you don’t want to use a knife, you can always break it with your hands. So you pop them off like that. So that’s one too: You can take the bloom stock off.
How to trim the leaves
Then you have a man. Now we have these four plants. What’s the next step? Okay, so you can trim the leaves off, and you can either do that again with a knife so that you can trim them off about like three inches, or you can do it with your hand. Also, you are making this straightforward circle like that: okay, yeah, all right you can tear off the dead, leaves like that. Okay, I’ll do that, and so, while we’re I’m doing that, you’re going to tell us about what we got here with the soil. Okay, so you probably want to add compost to your soil work it in clear out any weeds, and then you’re ready to plant. You want to make sure to before you replant that you get all the little increases such as this oh, the tiny ones.
Okay, you want to make sure you have all those out, because if you leave those in they will grow like few years. You have maybe a different color blooming in the middle of like a purple blooming in the noble white Iris, and it’s probably because you look, you forgot some of these small increases. Oh, so you want to plant them, maybe a different place, or you can compost them. Yes, all right now. Is there a certain amount of depth that you want? These do wanna bury em. Do you want to on top of the soil? Won’t they want to sit right on top, so put them on here, nice soil. You want to be rooted in the back, spread them out a little bit. Mm-Hmm just put the dirt around, and then the rhizome will rest right on top there all right, and I’ve always heard that you want them facing a certain way.
How to replant the Iris bulbs back in the ground
So what is that about? Well, they have a front and a back to the roots kind of spray out in the back here. Okay, – and this would be the front so when you plant them, you could plant them. Whichever way you want and the front would be alright I’ll be right here, So these are facing them – the grass bed there, okay, and then I see that you also package fertilizer. So what do we use that now? Yeah? You could use that now. So we use six-ten, and you can sprinkle around. He tries out.
We can do it now when you plant and then you can do them about a month before they bloom all right in spring. So usually, when the tool start blooming, you could add the fertilizer. Oh, that’s a good reminder, and so this is the time really to order Irises, so you’re in full production of filling orders. So really, you can go to the website and collect all kinds of beautiful Irises, yeah, Shriners, Gardens calm, and you can order now through the end of September, and you can still plant by the end of September.
Yeah, that’s perfectly okay! You want them in the ground. Six weeks before the typical first frost, so Western Oregon and it September before – ah well, you heard it from Ben he’s got all this information, so you can go to the website, shiner Cyrus website and order your Iris and maybe get some fertilizer too, because they package It really for the Iris and you can get them in your garden this September, and you’ll have blooms next year. If you have any other questions they send information with the packages, or you can call the office, and they’ll answer any of the items that you have about planting your Iris Ben you made it easy thanks so much…
When to trim Irises after blooming?
Hi, everyone, it’s Katherine with Colorado Yard Care.
I wanted to share with you what you should be doing to take care of your Irises after they finish blooming. Here we go so this is an Iris plant that has actually finished blooming for the year and now you can see it’s got all of these spent flowers on the stalks that really you’re not adding any beauty to the plant and in fact, they’re probably detracting from It so at this point we want to take them off, but the question is: what’s the best way to do that. So if you look at the way, this is growing.
You’Ve got the center of the Iris plant, which becomes kind of an open center, and then you’ve got groups of leaves to see that coming off the roots there, and then you’ve got to flower. Stalks, which have a few leaves even the leaf up here, and then the flowers. So if you actually just come in and cut off the stalk-like this you’re left with a kind of awkward-looking stuff. That’s actually going to turn brown over time and that’s not going to actually be very attractive for you. So the other option would be to come in and cut off the whole entire flowering section right here, but then you’re losing the photosynthetic capacity of these leaves.
These leaves are producing food for the plant and making this into a strong Iris. So we don’t really want to do that either, so my solution is to find the flowering stock tree-sit back until you’re getting to a set of leaves that are attractive. So, in this case, we’ve got three right here and I’m actually gonna. Take the best pruners. Come in and clip that stock as far back as possible, without damaging the leaves, so I could maybe even go just a little bit farther oops, it’s a very clean-cut, but then what that does is it removes the whole entire flowering stock but still preserves these leave to make food for the plant, so I’m just gonna come in and do that again.
Let’s take another example: there’s nice flowering stalking to follow it back to a nice set of leaves right here and we’re gonna cut it with my pruners and single to hide that stub and that’s how you remove the flowering stalks as I’m cutting. I just want to point out that I do like to make an angled cut on the flower stock and the reason that I’d like to do it. That is that I find that because the Iris leaves are growing at an angle. If you make an angled cut, it tends to hide that cut stub a little better than if you make just a horizontal cut. There’s not a plant health reason to do that.
It’s just an aesthetic choice. Now one thing you’re gonna notice is that down in here, there’s a bunch of leaves that turn brown. This is normal. What happens is that Iris is the way they grow. They produce their new leaves inside of this fan, and the oldest leaves wither over time, and so you can just come in and pull these off, and that will also clean up the appearance of your iris plant. Another thing that you’ll notice about Iris when you get in and start maintaining them is that you’ll notice that they start to develop these brown tips of their leaves, and usually this isn’t a disease issue. What it is is it’s just these leaves starting to age and they start to die back from the tips into the bottom of the leaf, and so see this one is starting to die back about halfway. So if you’ve got an event in your yard or you want to look tidy, what you can do is come in with your pruners and just clip the brown portion of that leaf off.
How much can we trim the Irises?
So I like to come in about a half-inch into the green and cut that off and you can see how it just removes that yellowish-brown portion – it’s not really doing anything to improve the health of the plant, but it is making it tidier. So I like to make that cut diagonal, so it’s less physical, it’s a little bit more naturalistic.
So let me go ahead and do this and I’ll show you what it looks like after I’m done. So these are what my Irises look like after I finished deadheading them. So, as you can see over here, there are all the spent flowers. I’ve also removed a lot of the totally brown, leaves, and cut off some Brown leaf tips and that will keep your Irises looking tidy, beautiful, and fresh in your landscape for the rest of the growing season. So that’s what you need to do to take care of your Irises after they finish blooming thanks for watching and I’ll see you next time.
Potential topics…
Potentially, in the future I can plant bearded iris seeds, compare planting irises in sun or shade, plant iris dwarf seed pods, work on differences on how to plant iris in pots, pond, containers.
