I am sure this has been discussed before but I am new to the iris world and still learning! What do you do to keep the weeds out of your iris beds. I have been hand pulling and its a lot of work. Last fall after weeding I put down preen. I started in late this season weeding the beds and its overwhelming. I know its not good to mulch around the iris. I mostly have TB's. Please share your experiences with me. Thank you.

The weeds are terrible this year aren't they Lynn. I am having a hard time keeping up with them. First we had so much rain that you couldn't get out and weed and now that the weeds have overtaken all my flower beds, I am having a hard time keeping up with removing them.

Some years weeds are more prevalent due to climate/weather conditions Cindy mentioned above. I pull my weeds and if they are in an area where I am not growing plants I pour boiling water on them. I do not put salt in my soil as that kills the soil. I don't use chemicals even though I am tempted. Some years weeds are worse and some years I get an early start and they do not get so bad. I wish I had a solution for the weed problems but I just set aside garden time for pulling/digging/hoeing weeds. The proper tools make any job easier. Find the right tool and walk about with it when you are just admiring and always pull/dig a weed. Also, it helps me to remember that the outdoors is where weeds and bugs thrive so I have to share my space with them. This keeps me from getting too anxious about the weeds. It is startling to walk about on Monday and pull a few two inch tall weeds from a bed then go back on Wednesday and find the weeds you missed are now eight inches tall. LOL

Very true. I find we get different weeds at different times. One type will start in early spring, then another type will start and so on. I'm having trouble with this tall picky thistle type. You can't hand pull them because they will come right back. I use roundup on them but am very careful to only put it on the weeds and not my other plants.

If you do use round up I recommend spraying a little into a small container and then dipping a small artist paint brush into it and applying the chemical to the plant. This will keep it from going into the soil and from contaminating nearby plants. roundup has been banned in several other countries and there are currently lawsuits against the company. It will eventually be banned here too. My country often goes for big company profit before common mans health.

Yes, I hear that roundup is being found in every person that they have tested. It's in our food, which is sad. No wonder we have an epidemic of cancer.

I always used Round-Up to kill Poison Ivy. Bayer has a product available now that I am using instead. That is pretty much the extent of my weed killing.

The rest of the weeds are getting away from me too. But the biggest pain in the rear is all the seedlings from the Rose of Sharon. I thought I would leave two large ones when I made the garden in back of the house since I love seeing their blooms right outside the kitchen windows. Now I have hundreds of seedlings in among my iris. I am constantly wacking them with my Cobra Head.

You know, I hear a lot of people say that about Rose of Sharon but mine must be sterile because I have not ever gotten seedlings from it.

I have had good luck letting corydalis colonize with my iris (something they decided to do on their own). It is a nice look and seems to keep some of the weeds at bay.

I remove them all by hand. No matter what I'm doing, if I see a weed, I stop and pull it out and toss it out.

It's ok to mulch around irises. Just don't mulch too close to the rhizomes.

What Rob said. I have three large iris beds. Two are unmulched. The third I spread a layer of mulch (front end loaders are awesome!) then planted the irises through the mulch (mixed the mulch with the soil beneath) like normal with rhizomes at the surface. The mulched bed is weed-free compared to the others and has grown and increased much better. Lost zero to rot also.

Yeah, I hand pull most of my weeds but this weedy pickers are impossible. They pull out easy but even with gloves on you get picked and then within a week they are right back again. They are terrible and I don't know where they are coming from unless they are from the niger seed that I feed the birds in the winter.

I remove weeds by hand also. I make a point never go out to do any chore without stopping to see if there is a weed or start of grass that I need to pull up. It has gotten to be such a habit I have to stop myself from pulling a weed at the library or museum.

we have a 'weed' here called a greenbrier. It is one tough stem that grows very tall, has a few glossy heart shaped leaves and loves to tangle in shrubs and fences. It has 'stickers' on it that will impale you. The old timers called it a sawbrier because if you were walking and caught your ankle on it you would feel like it had been sawed in two. It has a very deep tap root and you may have to destroy a desired plant to get the greenbrier out. I have to cut them back to the ground on a regular basis in order for them to die. I hate them.

Having trouble keeping up with the weeds here too! I use Preen or corn gluten meal in the spring and after each section gets weeded. The smaller gardens are all done by hand. I clean them as I walk by and see a weed. The larger garden is more difficult due to its size and the fact that I am the only one who works in it. I have found a good rototiller to be a great help. It gets used on a regular basis wherever it will fit. I also mulch the edges of the plots of iris heavily and lightly over the rhizomes.

My biggest complaint are the frikkin thistles. Seems like nothing gets rid of them completely .I only use round up on a spotty basis - like for poison ivy.

I hear that there is a special breed of trained chicken that is useful - but we don't have them here!

The thistle is just the worst! I can hand pull the small ones but the big ones I have to dig with a shovel and sometimes I am not sure that I get all the roots. I did start to use a little roundup toady which I hate doing but I have let this project get out of hand and I seriously need to get it under control. I used to hand pull all my clients weeds and would never use it so it really goes against my grain to do it! Of course I was younger then and it was before my 2 knee surgerys! People don't know how lucky they are to have healthy knees!

I have some puncture vine growing in the gravel walkway down by the barn. I may have to resort to some kind of chemical warfare on this weed. I hate this weed! I've removed a lot of it by hand, but my fingers are usually killing me before I can finish pulling it all out.

I noted that weeds & grass are particularly tall this year. Hubby says that is what we get for using fertilizer. Well, the irises needed something to eat.

I have been seriously thinking about some grass-be-gone on areas where I constantly pull it out. We do hand pulling here. I have been tempted to blow torch the gravel areas, but my honey says no.

Rob, I had never heard of "Puncture Vine"... I googled it, and hope i never see it.

Interesting reading:
http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/PESTN...

Back to weed control...
I used corn gluten this year for the first time, thanks to Arlyn's recommendation.. I got it out before the first rain in December, and it was very effective in preventing that first crop from sprouting. What did come up was easy to pull or hula hoe... I should have followed up with another application about 6 weeks later to get the next crop, but didn't get around to it.. but even so... preventing those first weeds was huge..
I also use a weed burner, which is really effective on the softer tissued, and newly emerged weeds.
The cracks in my fingers are tattooed with dirt from hand weeding. My fingernails are a mess, and that's just the way it is.