Hallson Gardens

I live in a newly developed area when good soil is scarce and I have to purchase it in bag which usually comes with manure. we don't have any leaves. I can't have a compost bin. i'd like to amend the soil any way I can. any problem in chopping up the iris stems (not leaves) and spent blossoms and letting them decompose into the soil? no sign of iris borer nor any other disease. I don't want to use household vegetable leftovers as we have a vole problem. thanks for any advice.

birdy, we don't use them in our compost. We found they don't compost well but if you shred them it might work better?

Hi Birdy, I see that you are in Zone 4, our summer place in the UP of MI is also Zone 4. I have a terrible problem in this zone and my soil here with bacterial soft rot so your idea about using iris leaves and spent blooms I would forget. If one plant starts to get the disease spreading it around as soil enrichment will cause a lot of heartache if you have a lot of irises. Mine are doing much better this year but I dug every single rhizome last year, about 50, cleaned out the rot, rinsed tools in Clorox, laid them out to dry and treated them with fungicide. I heard that it was crowding with daylilies that cause the issue so I cut back my irises and daylilies to the ground when we left late last August. I don't have that problem at all in MD and my Irises and daylilies are much more crowded there. I would try to find a product called Leaf Grow as a soil amendment.

thanks for good advice. my assortment of irises come from various friends and plant sales. I don't know the names of any of them. the irises are in several areas next to the foundation of our house. one area is very dry and soil is powdery. other area has heavier soil. this last area is overcrowded and should be thinned out. hate to think of digging them out as it sounds like WORK. doing it next year seems like a good plan. we have voles everywhere. I think they cleaned out some rhizomes in dry area over winter as I found empty "shells" this past spring and it seems my one and only white iris disappeared. i'm not familiar with Leaf Grow but will look for it. i'm already looking forward to next spring and new iris blooms.