Wednesday, May 17, 2006

roses

This long delayed end of spring is working well for my perennials, particularly the roses.

Several of them are thick with buds, including a couple of David Austin English Roses, Gertrude Jekyll's and my climber, New Dawn. The week of rain means that I'll get another weekend opportunity to finish up heavy weeding. Alas, the grass is starting to look like green waves of grain.

3 comments:

lemming said...

I was afraid that a week of rain had discouraged my iris (irises?) from blooming, but this morning a good dozen opened up and I am so happy!!!!

Please remind me again of the correct time in which to move them around and when to administer hair cuts?

Don said...

lemming -- I'm glad your irises are blooming. Once the flower stalk is spent, you can cut it off.

The leaves, however, should be left alone until early to mid August. Then you can dig the rhyzmes up and divide them, cut back the leaves and replant. If you wait till fall, it will disturb the development of next year's flower which will have already started inside the rhyzme.

lemming said...

Vocabulary help??

Spent?
Rhyzmes?
Development of next year's flower?

Can Irises cross-breed? I swear that I have some color combinations I didn't see last year...