IRIS CARE

My Irisarian Adventure, Part 1

My "Iris Adventure" began nearly a decade ago, when a friend gave me the information to attend an iris show. I was immediately hooked on irises that hot and muggy June day, as I walked through rows upon rows of Tall Bearded iris in bloom. I was so fascinated by the whole scene of the show that when I was offered a grocery bag full of rhizomes, there was nothing stopping the iris craze that was about to begin.

A few years later, in 2003, I made a trip to Oregon -- the "Iris Mecca" of the world. There I met some of the iris hybridizers whose names I recognized from reading iris descriptions in my catalogs. Many wonderful people gave me advice on how to hybridize my own irises, and by 2004, my first attempts at creating a new iris began.

That year I made nearly a hundred iris crosses, hybridizing my SDB's with my TB's, mating a pink iris with a black one, as well as trying to find the stylearms deep within the ruffled petals of a certain Space Age iris. (What can I say? I loved the blooms so much that I was trying not to tear or displace any of the petals!)

By September of 2004, I had counted and recorded in my "stud-book" a total of 27 iris seedpods, which together contained a total of 937 seeds. I felt like a proud parent, and I wasn't even married yet!

Now that I had successfully cross-pollinated irises, and actually held in my hands the seeds from those crosses, I found myself stuck between a rock and a hard place! I had no clue how to properly plant the seeds! Many theories abound giving instructions for starting iris seed, but most of these came from temperate to warm-climate regions. Here in Northern Michigan, I needed to learn how to germinate the seeds utilizing the sub-zero winters that come upon us by Thanksgiving Day.

In November 2004, I planted all my iris seeds into 1-gallon size black plastic pots. I knew that the planting medium I used had to have excellent drainage, since water-retentive soils could induce the seeds to rot before they sprouted. This would explain why my choice of soil was sand, dug by the pail-full from an abandoned sandbox that had numerous grasses, ferns, and brambles growing in near-profusion. After the seeds were planted 1 inch deep, the pots were watered well from the top, and moved to a ground-surface location right up next to an abandoned building. (They were not submerged into the soil.) Those first pots were watered every other day until frost hit us, and then they just sat in the same place until spring.

After the ground thawed and the snow left, I started watering the pots again. I just knew that hundreds of sprouts were going to pop up randomly in the pots . . . but it never happened. Finally, on June 7, 2005, my first iris sprouts came up out of the pots! But something was terribly wrong. In a month when the iris blooms rule in the garden, and the roses are well on their way to displaying their summer splendor, I had only 3 iris seeds that sprouted. The depth of my disappointment was similar to the level of water in the rain barrel! Hoping to coax more seeds into germination I kept up watering periodically, but no more seeds germinated. Out of 937 seeds planted the previous fall, I had only three seedlings to work with.

I could have quit while I was ahead (or was I still behind??), but I had already begun making SDB pollinations, and was already seeing my first pods for ’05 forming. So, I continued hybridizing through the month of June and the end result was 817 more seeds to play with. By this time my worry was put to ease, because I had been studying the various techniques on germinating irises.

The technique changes for '05 were simple, but I believed they would have dramatic results. My plan for that fall was to re-plant all the remaining seeds from '04, as well as start out all the '05 seeds that October. I chose to start the process in October, rather than November, because I did not think the '04 seeds had enough watering time before winter set in. Instead of using sand as a potting mix, I purchased six cubic feet of "germination mix" from a local greenhouse/nursery. Using the wonderful tools of the world-wide-web, I found a source to purchase 4-inch plastic pots, which would be more manageable than the gallon-sized pots I had previously used.

While it was yet early in the fall, I decided to begin filtering my '04 seeds (sand and all) through a sieve -- one pot at a time -- to find out the fate of my first 937 “iris kids." As the dry sand filtered through the holes in the sieve, the seeds I had so tenderly planted almost a year ago appeared one by one on the surface. I grabbed one of the seeds from that first pot and instinctively gave it a squeeze. To my astonishment, it literally POPPED! Stunned, I knew that this was not a good sign! So, I grabbed another little seed. When that one popped, it squirted me in the eye! Frustrated, I went through the entire sieve-full of seeds, and in the end, only about half of them were still "firm to the squeeze." These were planted into new germination mix, and set out on a bench in my greenhouse to resume a watering routine.

I had already potted up my 817 seeds from the '05 bloom season, and had them in my greenhouse. The watering schedule was at first daily, and then "sloughed off" to thoroughly drenching the pots only when the surface of the potting mix dried out. To my amazement, those simple changes already had some fascinating results. Three weeks into the "new program," seven iris seeds germinated, from crosses of both median and tall bearded iris. Before winter set in, fourteen seedlings were transplanted into "community pots" and brought into my house, where half of them have continued to grow (the other half damped-off after transplanting). My odds of starting seedlings had already improved -- I had more than doubled my seedling count, from three seedlings in '04, to seven seedlings in '05! (Unfortunately, none of the re-potted "popping seeds" sprouted during the watering program.)

As I sit here writing this article, winter is still blowing around its nasty north winds. The seed from years 2004 & 2005 are buried in the garden with the pot rims at ground level. Oak and maple leaves were used as mulch, and chicken wire was laid on top to prevent "critters" from wreaking havoc with any future iris babies. My dream for this spring is to see hundreds of green seedlings popping UP out of the pots! Then my next dilemma will be where to put the little darlings! Oh, life should be so hard . . .