Thanks all for the kind words and this makes 2 years in a row for me it sucks !! but I think last spring was worse because they all fell over right at bloom time at least this way I don't spend all spring babysitting and weeding it I can move on to other projects that need done around here.. I remember last year as they were all falling over I was still trying to maintain the old place and as I was unloading the mower off the trailer I looked down in the gravel driveway and guess what was growing out of it
This made me curious what else was alive there and guess what was blooming perfectly happy in the woods in the pile of discarded seedlings and weeds
and towards the back of the fence I most have missed something while digging all the seedlings to move which was surprising, but equally surprising was we also had the whole area along the fence tilled and grass seeded with a tractor and guess what was blooming
all by itself. It just goes to show how hardy these plants can be when left alone after seeing this it hit me that I needed to leave my field alone and let mother nature take its course and see if they would recover. In years past I would have started digging as that seems to stop just about everything.
I wanted to show a couple pictures of what this looks like so you know what I dealt with last spring it comes on very quickly within days it seemed whatever this is causes a great deal of damage to your plants it somewhat resembles leaf spot when it starts but turns into a dark streak on the outer leaf and works it's way in and down from there it spreads and the bulbs will turn to mush if left.. I sent a box of samples to ISU looking for a ID but they were useless the answer I got was Erwina or soft rot which is always the end result of any disease is the bulbs they turn to mush but what was the cause, I was unable to get the streak in the Leaves ID'd.
I do remember we had 2 consecutive days of 80 degree weather in late April strange for Iowa followed by heavy rain which is when they starting looking a little weird it wasn't long after that I left for Oregon and from there it went downhill pretty quickly. I assumed some herbicide was left over in the dirt from the corn planted there before me and it affected the plants in late winter/early spring when they were under stress.. But
I dug a handful trying to figure out if the streak on the leaves started in the bulb or the leaves and worked its way down.. but couldn't find any evidence of it starting in the bulbs the ones I dug and cut in half showed no signs of disease in the bulb but when left planted in the ground the bulbs would turn to mush and the Oil streak works it's way inward and down, end result is soft rot.
This picture is from late fall probably a month before we had a kill frost it shows the North side of the field which was my seedling rows the majority of the field recovered as I thought it would and looked good what was hit in the spring had disappeared and I thought they recovered... but the brand new seedlings rows were developing the same look to the leaves
which was shocking because they had not yet been through a winter and I couldn't blame it on the freeze/ thaw cycles that cause stress to the plant and are so damaging here. I still had no idea what was going on, the seedlings grew extremely well increased and should have been wonderful this year but they seemed to be headed down the same path as the spring group.. I noticed all over the leaves there were Aphids which is common here and rarely seem to hurt anything ,but thought they may be spreading it so to combat it I thought remove the leaves the plants are going dormant anyway so we spent a week and removed the leaves about 6" up and tried to remove anything that had that look to it..
This is the current situation or end result of the battle... after sending some pictures to friends it looks like I was hit with 2 different diseases the 1st which starts in Hot Humid Conditions like described above is called Rhizoctonia which either kills and weakens the plant and Botrytis which came in and cleaned house when the conditions were perfect with the freeze/thaw..For those that asked what it looks like here is the monster...and what it does.. the plants in the pictures are soft, the tops pull out of them with little to no effort and whats left underneath is like a sponge if left over the next couple months as things warm again they will turn to soft rot.. Both of these diseases are soil borne but only attack in certain situations and from what I am reading brand new fields that have never had Iris in them are very susceptible to both
I could be wrong as to the cause of it but makes no difference at this point what's gone is gone and I will never plant Iris in that field again.. I know it is not a plant hardiness issue because the couple hundred planted in the backyard went through the same winter conditions the difference is a different soil and some of my seedlings were in multiple gardens and they are all alive except for that field.. I had a sandy/ loony mix trucked in for my tropicals and roses in the back and all Iris survived in that dirt..Once again incredibly disappointed as I have spent a tremendous amount of time and effort to get it to that point and the have it all disappear over winter is sickening especially this year with bus loads of people coming but I'm hoping the convention plants will wake up in the spring as I know there will be a lot of people visiting and I hope to have something to show them. I contemplated leaving it as it for a while as there are scattered plants that made it through, up and down the rows but the majority looks like these pictures and it would probably drive me crazy walking out there everyday looking at it let alone maintain it .. better to plow it all and start over.
I made a 100 or so crosses last year so will have seedlings again to line out in June and thinking Im going to line the berms and walkways again in the backyard like the other house it was easy to maintain and I can control erosion better and mix them in with other garden plants
so while it sucks for now I will enjoy not pulling weeds in a 3 acre field this summer.. Thinking I may take up a new hobby... surfing in July this year instead of weeds
