Hi guys,

We found this iris blooming at our local cemetery and was wondering if someone could give us an id on it. It's blooming now, but this might not be its normal bloom time if it was just planted this year.

Have no idea. It looks like a Gladiolus. (sp?)

Thanks for the info. Now I'm off to check out gladioluses!

You could probably take a trowel or knife and loosen up a couple little bulblets to take home. I'm sure they would want you to have them : )

Definitely a Glad! Have had two pop up out of nowhere in my yard. Here is a shot of one of mine for comparison.

Sherry.. lol! After getting some more info on glads, I don't think they'll make it here in zone 5, but if they do I might have to buy some next year... or keep my knife handy. ;)

Leslie - That's gorgeous.

Cats -- Glads will do just fine in your zone. Lots of people even north of you have them. In far north locations, the bulbs have to be dug up and over-wintered in a cool, dry location, and replanted in spring. I think you'd do OK where you are if you planted them near your house, especially along a south-facing wall. FWIW.

My son has some as foundation-type plantings, and has good luck over-wintering them. I plant mine in the spring, and either pull them up to save for the next year, or just let them go, and plant new ones the next spring. I use mine at the back of the iris beds, for a little late season color.

hardy glads work here. the regular glads do not come back if I leave them in the ground over the winter.

Thanks for the encouragement guys. It's good to know there might be some glads that can make it here.

We always had Glads while I was growing up in Michigan. They were really good growers there.

I have tons of them in my yard to give it more color during the "bad" time for the iris.

My grandma used to have a row of them in here veggie garden, along with zinia's, batchler buttons, and others. She used to love to have fresh cut flowers in the house.

I had forgotten - but they make great cut flowers. Big sprays of Glads are wonderful in the house!

I tried growing them, but the always seem to flop over.

They do for me, too, Tom ! I've trained Rita ( kinda' like Pavlov, and his dogs ! ) to plant them (she says I don't plant "deep enough !), and then to stake them, when they fall (she say's it's only the ones I plant that fall ) but they ALL seem to go down ,either in a heavy rain (not a problem lately !! ), or a strong wind (which we have had in abundance!). We tried some of the "hardy" glads once, and they did make it through the winter pretty well, but are no where near as nice a flower as the "regular" ones (IMHO). Every spring, Menards has a big sale price on spring bulbs, and I can buy a bag of 30( I think , been a while since spring, I guess !)for about $5, and before too long, they mark them down, and it usually falls into their spring "everything's 11% off" sale so they are cheap enough that we just plant 'em, and leave them in the ground to freeze at the end of the season....except for those that Rita especially likes, "we"dig, and save those......Arlyn

I use grow-through supports like these at Gardener's Supply:
http://www.gardeners.com/buy/g...

It keeps most of them upright... I also use them on asters, dahlias, phlox.. and probably other things I can't think of now...



You can barely see a bit of the support just above the tips of the iris..

And there's a taller, prettier support that the dahlia is growing through that would probably work well for glads too.

Nice picture, Love the rain gauge! What's that for anyway??? I know it's Garden Art!

Currently, the rain gauge collects wayward sprinkler drops. We had fairly heavy fog/mist yesterday.. Enough to make my hair frizzy, but not enough to cover the bottom of a 5 gallon bucket.. It was glorious gardening weather.. not a great hair day though.