Welcome, jt. That's really nice of your friend to share her plants.

Your irises probably fall into the general category of "historic" irises. After they bloom, you may be able to identify them by comparing them point by point to irises on the HIPs website and other sites dedicated to historic irises.

The more sun you can give them the better. They should do just fine in reused potting soil. I don't think they need bone meal- they are not bulbs- but I also don't know if it would help or harm. They really just need good drainage and sunlight with an occasional good watering. Irises do not like fertilizers that are high in nitrogen: it can make them rot.

Irises are easy-care plants, and they should give you lots of pleasure in the years to come.

Renee

I would add fertilizer to pre-used soil. As Hosenemesis said it must be low nitrogen for beardeds. Any non-acidic 5-10-10, 5-9-7 ~~ that type of ratios (5 is the nitrogren).

I use bonemeal in beds only, as it takes a year or so to become available to roots.

Hi Hosenemesis and Iris_gal! Thanks for the welcome and for the advice. Someone else told me that the whites could do quite well here in Fort Worth with partial sun, so I might toss a few along the side of the house. There is so little there, and it could use something cheerful. I was told the white ones may very well be "cemetary irises," which need very little care. That is always good to know.

I will be sure to post again in the spring to let everyone know how they turned out! Thanks again.

jt

Once established, you can't kill cemetery irises. They keep on keeping on in our climate year after year. Mine are in the alley. They rarely get water. I've lived here 15 years, and they increase and decrease, with the changes in weather, but there are always cemetery irises in my alley.

In that wet year we had two or three years ago, I lost a lot of my irises to rot. However, it was the newer varieties that died. My older varieties survived with just slightly diminished clumps.

They'll grow and survive anywhere. They just won't bloom if they don't get enough sunlight, or blooms will be sparser.

I have a pot of iris that I've had for about 3 years. I meant to put them there only until I made a new bed. Some how, they are still there. They never have bloomed, but have survived.

Bkay
Dallas

I'm wondering if I have spaced my iris to close to one another. If I were to divide them now, what chance would they have of blooming next June? I live in a mountain region in So Cal. My winter begins around November. When I first created my iris bed it was in October of 2009. First year I had just a few blooms, and this last spring I had 20 plants blooming. Now that they have shown what they can do, do I want to take the chance that division will cramp their style? sles

To a large degree the blooms are already set inside the rhizomes right now, so as long as they are moved/divided in a way which preserves most of the root structure, and they have time to re-establish new feeder roots they would be fine. November is late, but since you are in a fairly mild zone they should be growing roots all winter.

As a suggestion I would not dig an entire clump, but instead cut out only a few impacted rhizomes from each clump. Those rhizomes left in the ground should be fine.

I once moved many iris to a temporary bed in summer during construction and moved them back in February, and still had OK bloom. In this case I used a large shovel to dig each small clump and tried to keep much of the rootball intact.

Chad

Well, I waited anxiously this spring for my Irises to bloom, but they never did. I planted yellow ones near the front door, and I planted the white ones on the side of the house. The white ones made the healthiest looking stalks.

The friend who shared the bulbs with me told me they were very easy to grow. Anyone know why they still have not bloomed? It is now mid June!

You mean they put up bloom stalks but then the stalks did not bloom? That would be very odd.

I am in a place way farther north than you, so I'm not sure if my experience would be helpful, but one thing we may have in common is dry weather in the spring sometimes. Perhaps your iris were too dry for the buds to open? That is, if you mean they put up bloom stalks but the buds didn't open. Iris can tolerate a lot of dryness, but if it is dry during bloomtime and you don't water them, it can ruin the blooms.

Perhaps I did not give them enough water, but I did water them. I think the problem was probably that they do not get nearly enough sun.

I had the same problem with my daffodils this spring. The stalks came up, but there were no blooms. The daffodils had a lot of sun, so I do not think that was the problem. I think the problem with the daffodils was that the previous year the stalks were mowed down before they had enough time to gather enough energy from the sun to bloom this last spring.

I have a terrible time with the people who mow my lawn, but there is nothing I can do about it. The man will whack through pots, mow down bulbs, and mows so low that instead of a mowing it is more of a scalping of my lawn. The "landscape maintenance," however, is included in my rent, and I cannot fire the guy because he is the father of the estate agent who manages the property for the owner, who lives in California. Really, the father should not be doing any sort of yard work at this point, as he is 82 and does not appear to be in good shape, but guess what? If the father does not mow, the estate agent does it himself, and he does just as crumby a job as his father. They just do not care about the property or the tenants, but they do not want to let the money that is spent on the "landscape maintenance" go to someone else. They want to keep the money in the family, as it were. It so frustrating. I cannot even get them to sharpen the lawn mower blades so that they cut instead of tear the grass. : (

What a bummer. I wonder if they would let you mow instead. I gave up trying to garden at my last apartment because people used the flower beds to do all sorts of awful things. I feel your pain.
Renee