Will the soil be too frozen to dig in the winter?

You may be able to get away with one rhizome per gallon pot if the rhiz is small.

Since beardeds travel I use a moveable stick-in-the-ground label 'stick'. Currently I'm using a cut up levolor blind and soft lead pencil. I've used cut up bleach bottles, nursery plastic sticks, popsicle sticks (the worst), and a few other things.

If you decide to dig them, I would write directly on the irises with a sharpie. I also use the copper tags that you can write on with a ball point pen to leave an indentation.
It would be best to pot them up, though.

Whew, I need to proofread and spell check before I post things!! Had to go back and edit...sorry about that!

Thanks for the advice. I was hoping that potting them would be ok. So if I place one rizome in each 1g pot, that sounds like it would be ok and then just keep them in dappled sunlight?

I have a box of those copper tags that I bought for the roses but never used, so that sounds like a good idea. They are the kind that you can attach with wire, so maybe I can find some kind of thing to attach them to at the hardware store. Good excuse to go shopping and run by the plant section while I'm there anyway ;)

Tammy