I've got a clump of irises that keeps getting bigger and bigger. I want to split it and give a clump or two to a friend, and plant a clump or two in another part of the garden (or maybe in the backyard).
Any idea when the best time to split irises is?? I'm thinking autumn, but does that give the new planting enough time to root properly before winter?? Also, do I just cut through the plant down to the roots, or do I have to dig up the complete bulb??
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Hello everyone. I'm a newbie here so I don't want to offend anyone, but in a rival gardening magazine which arrived in the mail today (I get Gardening Life in the mail also), there is a great article in Canadian Gardening about digging, dividing and transplanting irises. Hope this helps. I see that there is already some wonderful advice on this subject. Have fun! I'll be dividing mine this week also.
you can basically do it until before the ground freezes! And Foxxy has good advice about the bone meal, I usually forget that, but it encourages the roots to grow, and the flowers next season. And you can pretty well use a shovel to cut down into the clumps of nearly every kind of perennial. Just one or two where this treatment is not a good idea -- usually the bearded irises, because they have the big rhizomes that can rot if you have cut into them and then put them into wet soil; that's why I suggested teasing them apart. And other things that grow from large rhizomes, like dahlias.
I can wait till September to transplant the perennials. How late in the season do you think I can transplant?? Usually, we get a pretty good frost around Thanksgiving.
I think you can transplant the perennials as soon as they have finished flowering. You could move them now but they may lose the flowering in a new spot. Add a hand full of bonemeal to the new holes and water, water well in this hot weather. If you can wait I would until cooler weather in September as that should give the plants time to readjust to the new spot.
I've never split irises before, so I want to make sure I do it right :)
Do you know if all perennials can be split and/or moved in the fall?? I may need to rearrange some of the perennials in my flower bed -- I've added some new ones over the summer, and they're not really very well organized!! I had to fit them into the spaces that were available at the time that I bought them.
you just use a fork to raise the clump (still with earth on) and then trim off the tops of the leaves, so you don't get them flopping all over the place (cut them straight across and leave about 4-5 inches). Then you can tease apart the various rhizomes in the clump, so you have some fannned out leaves with a rhizome (bulb) and roots attached to each one (throw out the ones that look diseased). Then replant each of the bulbs with its leaf fan so the rhizomes are not too deep in the ground. Firm around the roots and water well.
As to time, you can pretty much do it any time they are not blooming, as long as you water them for the weeks following the transplant. Depending on where you are, you may want to wait until September -- especially if you are somewhere where August is particularly dry and hot (like southern Ontario). But then I have transplanted them VERY early in the season before they bloomed and gotten away with it (although I don't think thye bloomed that first season) -- see the pic on my album of the perennial border in 2001 -- that floppy mass on the bottom left is a border iris that I moved that spring - that's one advantage to trimming the leaves, they don't look so forlorn! It is doing extremely well now and actually should be divided again this fall.