Saturday, August 16, 2014

Divide… and Conquer

or

"Go Forth and Multiply"

or

"One Iris, Two Iris… Two Hundred-Twenty Five!"

The iris I planted less than three years ago are thriving. 
I planted, at most, two dozen single rhizomes,
and they turned into this:


The iris are overtaking the tulip bed.
It is time to thin the ranks!
(Especially since I ordered tulip bulbs and will 
need access to the bed to dig up the old and plant the new.)


Since I had created a nice, fluffy bed for the iris previously,
(Which may be one of the reasons why they prospered!)
It wasn't all that difficult to get them out of the ground.


The clumps of rhizomes looked happy and healthy!


I separated them. Threw 'mother' rhizomes out,
and trimmed the leaves.


Voilà!
225 iris plants. I counted them!

Care for an iris or ten?

Watch out day lilies…
you are next!



8 comments:

  1. I have no white Irises. Those are beautiful.

    We have the old fashioned blue and the old purple two toned and one yellow that has survived from Mom's special irises.

    You are blessed.

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  2. Seems like a lot of work. Get yourself some free range chickens, and they will eat or scratch up everything, you won't have to be constantly laboring with your plants. We discovered this by accident when I got chickens and they annihilated all of my wife's lovingly planted and cared for flowers and shrubs.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. LOL Harry, I'm not sure I want to feed my pretty plants to chickens! However, some day, when we are not traveling, we will have chickens and they will be free-range. I love chickens and love fresh eggs!

      Delete
  3. A blogger I follow from Iowa (Larry's Creative Zone) lost most all his Iris to Iris Borer, he is trying to save what he can..you are lucky! Yours look big and healthy! :)

    ReplyDelete
  4. You are very ambitious. Well done.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Nice! The last couple of places I've lived were not conducive to growing much of anything, but the bulbs did spring up for a few weeks years after year. They never multiplied, though.

    ReplyDelete

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