Note 14: CONGESTED IRIS - time to divide
Gardening is cyclical. Some jobs are carried out daily, some weekly, some monthly, and some annually. Some can even extend beyond that, being shunted down the to-do list or simply forgotten. This week I’m embarrassed to say it was the latter. A clump of Iris alongside the house had been completely overlooked. I probably last paid attention to this wonderful clump of ‘Kent Pride’ four or five years ago, since then they have thrived but as the rhizomes increased in size, congestion caused flowering to drop off. The grand total this year was one flowering stem. I don't even remember seeing the flower. It’s just the withered remains that have reminded me of its presence and now is the time to do something about it.
Using a border fork I lifted the rhizomes and after shaking off the soil took them back to the greenhouse where I sorted them into four groups - those to be planted back into the same location, some healthy looking examples to be given to the neighbour, some dead desiccated specimens, and some so small they needed to be grown on.
Leaves were cut off, roots tidied and trimmed, and having survived in a rather dry spot, thrown into a trug of water to rehydrate for 20 minutes while I dealt with the remainder of the batch.
Outside I improved the soil where they had originally been growing - a handful of chicken pellets and a bucket full of homemade compost doing the trick. Ten of the best examples were replanted with their thizomes facing outward towards the sun and just level with the surface of the soil - an old trick taught to me by my octogenerian neighbour 30 years ago. “They like to be baked by the sun," he told me. They were then watered in.
My new neighbours received half a dozen, and the same advice was passed on. Hopefully they’ll be able to do the same with their excess stock in years to come - years when I’ll be the old boy next door! The smaller rhizomes, about a dozen, were lined out in a corner of the vegetable bed. From experience they very quickly grow new roots and in a year or so will be ready to populate another hot dry location against the house.
I love the repetitive nature of gardening. I last wrote about dividing Iris during lockdown and feel it’s time to once again share this gardening operation just in case, like me, you’ve forgotten about that clump of beautiful Iris that you were given by the ‘old boy’ next door.
