Dead-heading Iris?

[John A. Harnick]

I've just been told that if I dead-head my iris, I won't have as large a
bloom as I had this year.

Is this the case?

I'm in zone 5 BTW.

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[Tom Tadfor Little]

John A. Harnick wrote:
>
> I've just been told that if I dead-head my iris, I won't have as large a
> bloom as I had this year.
>
> Is this the case?

No. When the stalk has finished blooming, you can remove the
whole thing (with any attached leaves) at ground level. This
is just "trash removal" because a single iris fan blooms only
once; next year's bloom comes from the increases (new plants)
that grow up alongside the old one.

You can also pluck individual blooms from the stalk after they
fade to make it look nicer as the later buds open, if you have
time for that sort of thing.

There's lots of iris information on my gardening web page at

http://www.rt66.com/~telp/garden.htm

Cheers, Tom.

--
===============================================================
Tom Tadfor Little tli...@lanl.gov -or- te...@Rt66.com
technical writer/editor Los Alamos National Laboratory
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Telperion Productions http://www.rt66.com/~telp/
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