Reblooming Iris?

Are there really reblooming irises? It does sound like a great concept, primarily because irises are ALL ABOUT the FLOWER;  after the spring bloom, the foliage, with a few notable exceptions such as I. pallida 'Variegata', doesn't add much to the garden and in fact, can look pretty ratty at times.  I've yet though, to my chagrin, to find the intersection of good care and good weather that will allow irises to rebloom consistently here in Kansas.


Earl of Essex

I first became aware of the possibility that some irises could have fall rebloom a couple of years back and once the concept sunk in, I sought out and planted a row of eight or ten varieties that were labeled as "reblooming" on the edge of a raised west-facing bed.  I now find that it was not as simple as it sounded.  The Reblooming Iris Society (yes, there is one), actually lists several types of reblooming irises including "cycle rebloomers" which bloom spring and fall, "repeaters" that produce new flowers right after the first spring flush, extending the spring bloom to one or two months, and "all-season rebloomers" which produce flowers irregularly over the season.  Unfortunately, most retailers, including some specialty nurseries, don't distinguish between these types and call them all "rebloomers", so you takes your chances.  I also have learned that gardeners in zones 3 and 4 can forget it;  little or no rebloom is seen in those areas ('Immortality', a white reblooming iris that is almost continually blooming in Southern California  may be the exception for cold areas).  And tropical areas may not see rebloom because cooler weather is needed to set off the second part of the cycle.  Finally, some varieties take a couple of years to start reblooming, so, once again, the gardener is asked to be patient. Luckily for us, selection for patience in gardeners is a Darwinian process. You are either patient, learn patience, or you don't garden long.  

This fall, my ' Immortality'  has produced a couple of anemic-looking blooms and the iris 'Earl of Essex', pictured above, did save the day with a few gorgeous and fragrant specimens.  Thus, two out of ten varieties that should rebloom have given me back a little bit for my efforts so far.  Even then, the 'Earl of Essex' was a bit aggravating because that particular plant in that place should have been the purple 'Grape Accent'.  I've become a fanatic about recording plant positions in my garden (because I long ago lost the names of most of my daylilies and the once-blooming irises) and when I put the new reblooming irises in the bed I made a special effort to get their positions right.  And, somehow, I still got them messed up.  Fiddlemuffins.

If you're going to try the reblooming irises, they require just a little more attention because they are said to grow more vigorously.  They benefit from a little low-nitrogen fertilizer in spring and fall and they should be watered more often during the summer to prevent dormancy.  And, of course, since water tends to make iris rhizomes rot, it is recommended to keep the rebloomers separate from other iris and to take extra efforts to make sure the soil drains easily.  They also need to be divided more often than usual for best results.  And good luck.  Schreiner's Iris Gardens lists 65 iris varieties that consistently rebloom in Oregon, including three iris that I grow with my regular iris and which I've never seen rebloom, and then they follow the list up with the admonition to "remember that remonancy is NOT guaranteed."

Garden Game

Recently, O.N.E. at her blog "Onenezz" or "One with Nature and Environment" challenged me to list ten things I enjoy doing as part of a little "Garden Game," which is in reality a little gardening blog ponzi scheme.  Okay, what the heck, I'm game:

Ten Things I Enjoy (in no particular order):

Planting

Despite the horrific clay mixed with flinty boulder soil that I have to dig in, I love to plant something new.  Particularly something that I've never grown before.  It's a little like giving birth, over and over, with the expected amount of sweat but not with all the icky fluids associated with animal births.

Reading

I'm a reader, always have been. As you can tell from my blog, I follow most of the better known garden authors, and beyond that I read fiction and mysteries and current events and biographies and generally most everything I can lay my hands on.

Browsing Garden Centers
There's nothing better to waste time than browsing garden centers. Doesn't matter if I've got a need, I can always make another hole to plant something in. That I enjoy this is something long recognized by my family, who refuses to go anywhere with me unless I promise I'll stick to a route that doesn't pass a garden store. Once, when we pulled up to a store and parked, my three year old daughter exclaimed "Oh No, Not More Roses!" with the same timber and pitch that a Titanic passenger would have exclaimed "Heaven Help Us!"

Waiting for the First Bloom

The first bloom on any new plant is always an anticipated joy.  Okay, sometimes it's a disappointment, but most of the time it's a joy.

Eating Strawberries

When the Greeks talked about ambrosia, I think they were referring to Strawberries.  Particularly sun-warmed, and eaten directly in the garden.  There is no fruit above them, in my opinion and they're the only fruit really worth all the trouble to produce.  Felt that way since I was a small boy. 

Garden Sounds and Fragrances

Nothing like closing my eyes and listening to the rustles of the Kansas wind in the Cottonwood trees. Or the Meadowlarks singing on the prairie in the morning. Many of the plants I grow are grown for their fragrance. Honeysuckles, Sweet Autumn Clematis, Roses, Peonies, and Iris all work best on the Kansas prairie for providing scent.

Writing

Writing follows as a natural consequence of reading and gardening and it also is an integral part of my work as an academic veterinary surgeon and educator, so I write during a significant portion of my time in one way or another.  That won't be new to those who have been to this blog before, nor will it be new to those who read the Garden Musings book that came before the blog.

Veterinary Orthopedic Surgery

What can I say? I'm lucky that I like what I do for a living. Surgery is a place where I immerse myself in a smaller world without the greater world's troubles, a world of anatomy and bone and muscle that is fixable and finite and leaves me at the end of the day with a feeling of accomplishment.  It's a Zen thing for me.  And I think the dogs appreciate it.

Watching Movies with my Wife

Dating, for us, was always a movie and it still is. Almost every week.  Not a lot of talk, just some popcorn and quiet time spent in proximity to one another.

Target Shooting

Yeah, with guns.  I won't try here to analyze the Freudian implications, but late in life, I've come to enjoy the concentration and satisfaction of placing a lead projectile into a small area of paper from a distance. Maybe it's a surgeon thing;  doing something carefully and accurately, the first time and every time. 

I've invited  the bloggers listed below to join in the game.  For those invited, the rules are simple:

a)  List ten things you enjoy doing.

b) Tell who invited you and where they blog

c) Invite another ten bloggers (or thereabouts) to join in.

A Photographer's Garden Blog
A Way to Garden
Fold, Fallow and Plough
Gardening Gone Wild
Hartwood Roses
High Altitude Gardening
May Dreams Garden
The Citrus Guy
This Garden is Illegal

And good luck.  In the meantime, we'll all get to know each other better, right?

Ban the Dust in the Wind

I thought I'd heard the pinnacle of supreme bureaucratic overreach when I learned about the EPA considering the banning of our annual spring burn (see my blog titled Burn the Prairie!) but it seems the EPA was just getting warmed up.

Recent frantic headlines and editorials across the Midwest, all something on the variation of "EPA to Crack Down on Farm Dust," have alerted anyone with the slightest interest in current events that the EPA is reevaluating the dangers present in the air we breathe; particularly regarding PM (particulate matter).  Twenty-one farm state US Senators signed a letter on July 23rd opposing changes in PM standards.  The local news picked it up about 5 nights ago and the local Manhattan, Kansas newspaper even ran an editorial on the subject late this week.   

All the hubbub is about the Policy Assessment for the Review of the Particulate Matter National Ambient Air Quality Standards (released to the public via the Federal Register on July 8, 2010).   Now, I'll tell you, even with my generally good scientific background, the 357 pages of this report are tough to read.  And it's difficult to take away anything that suggests that this is a farm issue.  The word "farm" only occurs in the report when discussing past litigation of standards and listing the American Farm Bureau Association as being one of the parties to the litigation.  And "agriculture" is only mentioned referring to a previous study that found that western airborne "contaminants were shown to accumulate geographically based on proximity to individual sources or source areas, primarily agriculture and industry."  In fact, all I can essentially glean from the report is that it is a comprehensive review of the evidence that particulate matter has detrimental effects on the cardiovascular, respiratory and visual systems, among other important body stuff.  All the hype about farmers having to wet down their fields before harvest and all dirt roads needing to be paved is coming from somewhere else, not from the report.  The big news that I can understand comes in Appendix 2, Table 2A-1 where it's revealed that under current PM standards, 12% of US counties (and 24% of the population) fail the standards, while the alternative standards being considered would result in anywhere from 29% to 79% of the counties (accounting for the living area of most of the US population) failing the new standards.  

So, I don't get it, myself, but out there in the public view there's a fairly dry report on particulate matter standards by what I'm sure are a bunch of highly knowledgeable, well-meaning scientists working for the EPA, and somewhere, some other intelligent scientists, who can draw conclusions from that report far better than me, are raising alarm sufficient to rile 21 US Senators that the EPA is trying to destroy America. 

I don't know how all this will finally shake out and whether we'll all just agree in the end that we can't really control (or it's too expensive and cumbersome to control) agricultural dust, or whether the EPA will establish new standards that will either lead to the total destruction of agriculture and business in the US or to another Revolution.  In the meantime, my feeble brain is pretty aware of the fact that "all we are is Dust in the Wind" to quote the famous rock song by Kansas.  Since most of the problem here is recognized as being created by human action, maybe People are the dust that the EPA will ultimately recognize should be banned.  Seems we're heading in that direction.  

Idiot-Proof Scanner Photography

For all those poor souls who, like me, sadly have the artistic ability of a donkey no matter what the canvas, I've got to show my first results with a new technique; using a computer and scanner to create collages with my garden bounty.

I became aware of scanner photography through the GardeningGoneWild Bloom Challenge website which had wonderful examples and was itself linked to a blog containing the works of photographer David Perry titled A Photographer's Garden Blog.  The breadth of possibilities and expression demonstrated on Perry's blog inflamed my obsessive-compulsive nature and, although pausing for supper, I spent the evening after my discovery choosing flowers and vegetation and trying the technique out my home scanner, and after a little photo editing, I created, among many others, the images here.

You've just got to try this technique out.  To get started, you need only a computer, scanner, and some garden material and after that, the sky is the limit.  Literally.  As far as tips go, I've already got a few from my brief experience:

a)  Use only perfect blooms and foliage;  the scanner will pick up every little imperfection.

b)  Keep the scanner surface perfectly dust- and streak-free.  Again, any defect will mar the final picture.

c) The only perfectly focused items will be right on the scanner surface. Items and blooms even slightly off the surface quickly lose focus.

d)  For pictures without a background, keep the room lights off and do the scanning at night to get a background that a little photo manipulation will turn to seamless black.

e)  You can try colored or patterned backgrounds, but in practice, I found it tough to make the textures of these backgrounds fit the pictures.

f) The photo editing software need not be sophisticated, but you will need some editing capability.  I used Microsoft Office Picture Manager for these pictures.

Give it a shot;  you'll amaze yourself and stun the friends and family who've given up on ever seeing your artsy side!