By Jackie Albarella
Falcons Keep, Cavaliers Cape, Edith Wolford … these may sound like names associated with a daytime drama, but they’re not. They’re the names of some popular iris.
Any day now the iris in your garden will start to bloom. Iris are an easy-to-grow perennial that will last in a garden for at least six or seven years. They provide great colors, from bright to pastel shades, and are also great as cut flowers. A good garden iris should bloom for two weeks and hold up in adverse conditions.
One of the most common iris varieties is the bearded iris. Bearded iris typically have big, wide foliage and dramatic sword leaves. Modern iris have bigger, more elaborate flowers than some of the older ones, and the new varieties also have more ruffles, branches and blooms. You can easily tell a bearded iris from another type by looking at the flower. They seem to have a “beard” growing down the leaf. The beard comes in several colors; red and yellow are two of them.
Bearded iris grow from a rhizome. This is a fleshy root which blooms only once. They will need to be divided in the third or fourth year. When you divide them you never plant the mother. You’ll know the mother by the scar left over from the stalk at the base of the rhizome. What you plant is the fresh growth. You can dig and divide bearded iris six weeks after they bloom. This is one of the few plants you move in the middle of summer.
Bearded iris like dry feet and need a minimum of six to eight hours of sunlight a day. They are not heavy feeders, so the only fertilizer you may want to use would be one with low nitrogen.
If you think your beards are not getting enough sun, or if they are in a damp spot, they could begin to rot. One of the first signs of trouble will be that they will not bloom well. When they actually start to rot, you may smell a pungent odor. If this is the case, dig up the irises and leave them somewhere to dry out. When they are dry, plant them in a sunny, dry spot. They should come back just fine.
Bearded iris vary in height from miniature dwarf which stand eight inches high, to tall beards which go 27 inches in height. In addition to their varying heights, iris also bloom at different times. If you plan it right, you can have bearded iris as a border, or a main focal point. Or plant beards in combination with Siberian and Japanese irises, and you will have blooms from April through July.
Many of your great blues come from the iris; however, there are white iris and and even black iris.
Iris have very few problems. The most common are too much moisture and the iris borer. The borer lays eggs in the fall which hatch in the spring and attack the rhizome. It will kill the rhizome but won’t hurt new growth.
New hybrid varieties have different color patterns, continuous blooms and different looking beards.
So try some iris in your garden. Perhaps you will be inspired the same way Georgia O’Keefe was.
Jackie Albarella is a lifelong gardener, artist and author and can be seen each Saturday on WGRZ Daybreak. Her latest book, “Dirty Tricks in the Garden,” can be found at her website: www.jackiealbarella.com.
