For daylilies, I was taught to dig a hole, build a little mound in the middle of the hole, spread the roots over the mound with crown just below where the surface of the soil will be. Fill hole and water in. The crown is where the roots meet the leaves.
For iris, eithe bury the rhizome just below the soil or just at the level of the soil so the top of the rhisome is showing a bit. Some people claim the exposed rhisome will sunburn, but I've never seen that and mine get full sun. Burying iris too deep will cause them not to bloom and the rhisome may rot.
Both iris and daylilies bloom best in full sun.

I don't fertilize either this time of year.

Here is a link that might be useful: some of my iris

Thank you Cheryl! Your irises are just gorgeous - wow!! Did I see some Siberians in there, or are they all mostly bearded iris? I am particularly interested in Siberian iris...are they as hardy as the bearded/German varieties?

The daylilies would appreciate some compost or well rotted horse manure mixed with your backfill soil when you plant them. I think they will do better if they are mulched. Wood chips are good. Water them regularly as long as the ground is not frozen.
I don't leave iris rhizomes exposed but they should be right beneath the surface of the soil. Iris have a tendency to heave out of the ground during the freezing and thawing of our Winters if they are not established. If I planted iris this late, I put a brick on either side of the plant to prevent heaving. The ideal time for planting iris here is August.

Siberian Iris are quite hardy. Their foliage is certainly more attractive than the tall bearded, but the flowers are not as spectacular.

Karen

I think I have almost everything but Siberians. I have tiny iris Reticulata, Standard Dwarf Bearded, Tall Bearded, Border Bearded, LA, Versicolor, Dutch. I don't have Japanese iris either. Siberians are a bulb iris, which are planted differently than tall bearded.

I see Siberians used alot around here at shopping centers and they've been there for years, which says something.

I forgot to say that iris take less water than daylilies.
Iris aren't xeric, but they do like it on the dry side.

I don't have anywhere near as many daylilies as Karen, who has thousands? But here's some pics of some of mine.

Here is a link that might be useful: my daylilies

My brain needs defragging more than my hard drive. And my hard drive needs it bad.

I should have said *Bearded* Iris need less water than daylilies. I'm assumimng your mom sent you bearded iris? The ones with the rhizome going sideways.

Some other iris, like Siberians, LA and Versicolor like it moist. I was thinking Dutch when I said Siberians are bulb iris - Dutch are bulb iris, Siberians have these long root things that cannot even be allowed to dry when transplanting.
LA and Versicolor do well even in a pond.

Thanks, Karen. I have oodles of large-ish rocks I can use so the irises will stay put. I'm not sure if the ones my mom sent are bearded or not - they are the standard frilly ones though, definitely not Siberian or Japanese. A tall yellow one and a few shorter ones (2') that are white with a hint of lavender. One day I do want to try some Siberians but someone in my office remarked that her experience with irises was that only the bearded were really easy and super hardy here - that the others were fussier. Who knows? I must admit that my conscience doesn't like the idea of something that needs more water though, and I thought I had also read somewhere that they like acid soil? But, I actually like the Siberian blooms better...very clean and delicate-looking. Bearded are gorgeous but almost too flashy for my taste. =)

Are German iris the same as bearded, but without the beards? And are the Dutch varieties all early-blooming and short? I did put in some reticulata last weekend with my daffodils. :-) This is going to feel like the longest winter of my life, waiting to see if all my bulbs come up!

I bet your mom sent you bearded iris. I posted a clear pic of bearded iris rhizomes below for you to compare.

I really should get some Siberians - from what I've seen around here they do very well. I think they'll do fine with the same kind of watering as roses and daylilies. I don't know about them prefering acid soil, but I'm thinking Alberson's up the street doesn't fuss too much and they've had some gorgeous stands of white Siberians for years.

It's my LA iris that like living in a bog.

Dutch iris aren't all that short but reticulata are.

Oooh I love frilly fluffy big and fancy bearded iris.

Here is a link that might be useful:

Just a quick note! Siberian iris can be grown in almost any moisture conditions from dry (I think short of xeric) to wet, and they can actually be grown as bog plants, so they'd be good for somewhere like around a downspout where they might get a lot of water at times, but not much at all at other times.

And I think they do prefer acidic soil, but I'm not sure how important it is. A couple years ago I ordered three of them, and what I got were VERY small roots, and they're taking a LONG time to get going. A couple of them are also pretty yellow (foliage) most of the time, and I've been trying to figure out if it's the clay soil or the alkalinity, or what! I do keep mine wet most of the time.

I really like the Siberian iris---and I hope they actually grow up enough some day to bloom!!! :-)

Skybird

Sky, I asked some iris folk about using them in bog situations and was told they liked moist, but had to have good drainage. Bog was out. So I stuck with my LAs and Versicolor for the pond. I'm thinking wet clay might not have the drainage I was told they need. But peat would fix the drainage and the pH problem.

For once I got curious enough to google something, but this site seems to have good info on Siberian iris culture, including pH, soil and moisture info.

Here is a link that might be useful: Beardless Iris Types and Culture

I've grown some Siberian Iris for six years in my front yard. They're not blooming in this photo, but you can see they're healthy. I did have one clump just die this year, but I couldn't figure out why. They get regular sprinkler watering three times a week when it's hot, twice a week at other times during the growing season. I'm bad about fertilizing, so these guys just survive on benign neglect.

It is time to divide them, because they're turning into large clumps with a hole in the middle. I'll probably do that in the spring. I suppose I neglect them because their bloom season is so short that I just don't care about them as much as some other plants. I've usually thought they were a bit boring, but I'm coming to realize that the foliage is valuable for the variety it adds to the garden.

The soil in this area is part native clayish stuff and part sandy loam, with a dressing of 2" or so of compost.

I am an iris know-nothing, but I found some when I moved here; they're purple. They were in the flower bed by the front door and they overwhelmed that, and so I dug them all up and put them along the eastern edge of my pond, about 2 feet out and up from the water, and where they get exposed to the western sun. A harsh environment.

They were spectacular for two years, but now, they are spreading very well but no longer blooming. I know they need dividing again, but the accumulated iris now measure in the square yards, and they work very well holding the pond bank together.

David, is 2 feet out and up a water logged situation? It doesn't sound it being that high up, but one can hope. My LAs are borderline cold hardy here and Sibs are supposed to be real cold hardy. Though I'm still thinking my daylily bed is my best bet for Sibs.

Another place that uses Siberians alot is Interlocken, where they have had nice large clumps of blue and purple ones for years. They get very exposed to winds and cold there, but that place goes through an obscene amount of water on grass so I'm sure the Sibs are well watered.

Ok Cheryl, I think that looks right. The rhizomes I have are long and kind of skinny and they have little rootlets coming out of one of the long sides.

Isn't personal preference a funny thing? I do really like bearded iris but I have no idea why they are on the verge of looking too fussy for me. Meanwhile, I absolutely LOVE big puffy hydrangeas and peonies which I'm sure are way too fussy-looking for a lot of people.

Cnetter, the iris are far from waterlogged, and must dry out completely in the winter. They do get some runoff during the summer. Aside from not blooming, the plants love it - they're spreading sideways and down into towards the water as well.

I love the vertical structure your iris gives to your flower bed, Steve. Im big-time into considering not only the flowers, but the contrasting foliages too when IÂm putting things in.

I think the problem IÂm having with my Siberians, Cnetter, is mostly the really heavy clay I have here and there around my yard. I will never cease to be amazed by how dramatically the soil can vary from foot to footÂfrom loose and friableÂto "modeling clay!" Two of the three iris are finally starting to get bigger (after 2 years), but the third was doing so badly I finally dug it up a couple months ago and have it in "real" potting soil in a pot to get it going before I stick it back in the ground. IÂm still not sure about the yellow foliageÂcould be chlorosis from the heavy, alkaline soil I have, but the one thing that seems to have helped them start growing this year is that IÂve been keeping them really, really wet all summer. A year ago, when I planted them, I just watered them normally with everything elseÂand they just SAT there. So even in the clay, the extra water seems to be helping them.

I checked a bunch of different sites about Siberian iris, and the opinions seem to vary very widely.

Perennials.com lists them with their "waterside" plants, as does this British site.

I also found them listed that way at this university web site

And the Kemper Center has some good info about growing them too. (This link isn't working! I'll try it below!)

One thing that has really surprised me a little bit is that the Iris missouriensis I got at the Spring Swap is doing fine with the pot in water (all summer). I wasnÂt sure if that would work or not! I. m. isnÂt shown on any of these lists as a bog plant, but neither is I. louisiana, which we sold lots of as water plants at PaulinoÂs. And I was REALLY surprised to see daylilies listed as bog plants on the British list! I never would have tried that!

I think I may dig my two (in the ground) Siberians up in spring and add a whole bunch of peat moss around them, and will add a lot of peat when I replant the potted one too. I do love the foliageÂand the flowersÂeven if they donÂt last long.

Skybird

Whoops! The NCU site didn't work either! Here it is!

Link's still not working!

Heres what they list as Shallow water/bog plants:

Common Name--- Scientific Name

Arrowwhead--- Sagittaria spp.*
Arum, Hardy--- Peltandra virginica*
Arum, Bog--- Calla palustris*
Astilbe--- Astilbe spp.
Bulrush, Soft stem--- Schoenoplectus validus*
Canna, Water--- Canna x generalis*
Cardinal flower--- Lobelia cardinalis
Cattail--- Typha spp. *
Common threesquare--- Scirpus americanus*
Cordgrass--- Spartina alterniflora*
Golden club--- Orontium aquaticum*
Great lobelia--- Lobelia siphilitica
Horsetail--- Equisetum hyemale*
Iris, Water--- Iris laevigata*
Iris, Japanese water--- Iris ensata*
Iris, Yellow flag--- Iris pseudacorus*
Iris, Southern blue flag--- Iris virginica*
Iris, Siberian--- Iris siberica
Iris, Blue flag--- Iris vericolor*
Iron weed--- Vernonia noveboracensis
Joe Pye weed--- Eupatorium dubium
Lizard's tail--- Saururus cernuus*
Loosetrife, Gooseneck--- Lysimachia clethroides
Marsh marigold--- Caltha palustris*
Pickerel weed--- Pontederia cordata*
Pitcher plant--- Sarracenia spp.
Rice cutgrass--- Leersia oryzoides*
Rose mallow--- Hibiscus moscheutos
Rush--- Juncus spp.*
Rush, Flowering--- Butomus umbellatus*
Rush, Spike--- Eleocharis acicularis*
Sedge--- Carex spp.
Sweet flag--- Acorus calamus*
Water forget-me-not--- Myosotis scoparius
*will grow in standing water

Wow - that one site shocked me - daylilies are NOT pond plants! They would rot! The daylily forum folk would have a field day with that British site. Rot is quite a problem in wet areas of the country and much moaning about it goes on. Don't trust that site!

I may try Sibs in the pond again if I can one cheap enough - but I plant my pond plants in clay because clay stays in the pot. I'll have to think about it and plan a little.

The majority of the sites I found said they needed good drainage so I am inclined to believe that most likely to be true, so the daylily bed is a good option too if the pond doesn't work (but I'm very short of space there).

I can also verify that Hibiscus moscheutos is pond hardy - Crown Jewels has survived and bloomed for years in the pond.

I've either got, or have tried in the past many of those bog plants. Some (Cattail) are incredibly invasive and I'm still fighting to get rid of them. I can definitely verify

as a pond plant - it has water up to the pot rim all year round. Iris louisiana is often called LA iris for short - and are often sold as pond plants. They're just borderline winter hardy here, but mine have survived for years so far and they come in

I was also warned off Japanese iris as pond plant, but see those listed too.

Can't have too many iris.

I was pretty shocked when I saw the daylilies too! Couldnt imagine they wouldnt rot!

Im not sure if the Siberians would work actually being in the water. I only know them to go as far as boggy conditions. If mine ever get big enough to divide, I might try a pot full in the pond, but that would seem to be years off based on how theyre (not) spreading at this point! With the couple things Ive put in the pond so far, Ive used regular Sunshine Mix and then covered the surface of the soil with small rocks to keep it in the pot. Thats how we potted things up at Paulinos. Well, they used pebbles! What I use is bigger than that. When the pots would tip over, the pebbles were a real mess to clean upwith bigger stones its easier! And the added weight of the stones helps stabilize the pot too.

We didnt sell the Iris ensata as water plants at Paulinos. The only ones we listed for actually IN the water were the LA, I. pseudacorus, and I. versicolor

Sure wish my tiny pond was bigger! There are several things Id like to try. Ive always wanted a gooseneck loosestrife, but the stuff is supposed to be totally invasive, so Im afraid to plant one in the ground!

Re your comment about cattails, a friend of mine in Illinois who just bought a big fancy house on more than an acre has a natural pond at the back of the property, and he plans to put cattails in it! Ive tried to tell him theyre going to take over the whole thing and be impossible to get rid of, but when he gets an idea in his head, he does it no matter what I try to tell him, so I guess hes gonna have to learn the hard way. Its really too bad, cause it could be really pretty with a few hardy water lilies and some other nice things in itlike some of the different iris!

Skybird

Don't do gooseneck loosestrife. I planted it in the terraces and will never be rid of it. It is pretty though.

Terraces in the ground? From what I've heard/read I won't ever plant it in the ground. That's why I'd love to get one in a gallon pot some day and stick it in my little pond--where it can't go anywhere. If you're trying to get rid of it, maybe you could bring a little piece along to the Spring Swap and I could stick it in a pot and in my pond next summer!

Gotta go for tonite. I'm STILL not sleeping from my adventure under a rock, and the room is starting to spin!

Skybird

I was young and foolish - back in the 80's when I didn't have internet to check on stuff and my books implied I could bury it in a pot - which I did but it still escaped.

I can definitely bring you roots, but still keep an eye on it or use a pot without holes. It'll pop out the bottom pot holes and travel along. I have a few horror stories about pond plants escaping their pots and rooting in their neighbors, the brick, rocks - mint, bog bean...

And back to irises - my Versicolor needs splitting up badly. This is such a "no care" iris.

I believe that there are some daylilies that would do ok in a pond or bog. Not the hybrids, but some of the species. Their native habitat includes swampland. I don't care to grow them that way, but I think you could.

Skybird, sorry to hear you're still having trouble sleeping from the scary time you had in the mountains. I thought about you when my family was camping at Lake Powell two weeks ago. It got down into the 40s at night and it sure felt colder than I thought it would! And I thought, "How would this feel if I were only wearing shorts and a t-shirt, sleeping outside on the ground with no sleeping bag?" It must have been very tough. Just glad you made it out of there the next morning. :-)

Thanks, Steve. No matter how hard I try to imagine myself back out there, I just cant do itnot even for an hour, much less 12. Last nite I was dreaming about coats and sweaters again. Thats what I was dreaming about when I was falling asleep out there. I kept dreaming somebody found me with a blanket or a coatand then Id wake up and figure out it wasnt real! Talk about disappointment! Sooner or later I have to start sleeping again. Just wish it would be sooner! But itll happen!

Skybird

By the way, Skybird, the reason those links didn't work above is that it looks like you added a slash "/" to the end of the addresses. The slash is always optional when you link to main website domain (as in http://www.gardenweb.com/ -- it could just be http://www.gardenweb.com). But when it's linking to a specific page (like http://www.gardenweb.com/somepage.html) a slash at the end would be an error that will prevent the page from showing.

So, my advice is just never add a slash to the end of an address. When it works, it's only optional, but in all other cases, it kills the link.

But I just copied and pasted them, Steve. Might there have already been an extra / in what I copied? I still don't understand exactly what I'm doing when I do that!!! I just copy exactly what needs to be there and then paste my link and words in where they need to go. (my sample is color coded now so I delete the old link and replace it with the new one--and the same thing with the words. If I ever had to try to reconstruct all the gobbledygook (that's a highfalutin computer term) by myself, it would NEVER work!

I'll bet your sample has a slash at the end of the address, and you didn't delete the slash when you deleted the old link and pasted the new one in. Does that make sense?

Ok, heres my original sample that I keep using. Everything between http and html is blue, and thats where the link gets pasted, and "deciduous tree fact sheet" is green and thats where the words get pasted. The rest is red!

So is there an extra slash that shouldnt be there? I dont think so, cause it worked for the first two links I postedand Im pretty careful to be sure I delete all of the "old" link. (I replaced all the with ( ) for obvious reasons!) Maybe I just goofed on those two, but I redid them a few times--starting with a new copy of my "sample"--when they weren't working, so I don't think I made the same mistake that many times---tho that's not impossible.

(a href=http://www.ext.colostate.edu/pubs/garden/07419.html/)deciduous tree fact sheet(/a)

There's definitely an extra slash.

The / after 07419.html shouldn't be there.

Some browsers may let it work, but it still shouldn't be there.

So between the URL and the words/description, it should just be a > ? Is that right?

So
(a href= goes in front of the URL
) goes between the URL and the description, and
(/a) goes after the description (same obvious substitutions! I can't believe how "powerful" that little Thanks, Steve

Now that I look more closely, you are also missing quotes which will definitely make a link not work. It's my most common typo mistake since I code links by hand.

So there should be (a href="http......07419.html")

But I've never used quotes, and until the two above, they've all worked. Here is the original sample I got that I made my template from (with the > = ) substitution) And I see it doesn't have the slash Steve is talking about. I've never changed this original sample in any way---'cause I wanted to be able to go back to it just in case I ever screwed up the ones I cut and paste into.

(a href=http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_url.asp)
Your Description Goes Here
(/a)

Ok, here's a link made with my ORIGINAL sample. It works, so it looks like I just need to re-do my templates!

Heritage Perennials

Wellllll....
Sometimes things work anyway, even if they aren't standard code.

But if you go to http://www.w3schools.com/html/html_url.asp used in your template you'll see the quotes are supposed to be there.

I'm a professional web page designer and write a lot of html, so I'm kinda fussy about these things. Because if I'm not, a customer will write and tell me my pages don't work on their computer.

Thats interesting, cause thats where my "original" came from, but when you posted it the first time, I still couldnt figure out from that site what I needed to do, and I think somebody from RMG finally just posted exactly what to use and thats where I copied it from. Now that I already know what Im doing, that site kind of makes sense to me! lol As long as it keeps working the way Im doing it, Ill just keep doing it without the quotes.

Thanks,
Skybird

Cheryl, you are a purist! Yeah, I know about the quotes, and I usually use them when I'm creating my own HTML pages, but I've found that they're reliably unnecessary here on GW and on most forums. So, I leave them out to make it simpler for others to learn how to make simple links. In that other thread where I put the code for making a photo align left and have the text wrap around it, I also knew I was leaving out some quotes, but it works reliably here without them.

Cheryl, do you do a lot of web design? Is it your main occupation? I know you have some fantastic garden pages on a personal website I saw some time ago. I have played around with several generations of my garden website since 2000, and then about two years ago, I settled on just turning it into a blog so I could record my garden activities, post photos and such. I did it just to have my own garden journal to help me remember when things bloom and stuff like that. But it actually has drawn some online fans who check in on it once in a while. My last version of the site structure before I started the blog is still viewable here. The blog is here. I have fun with it -- web design is a little like gardening; it lets the creative juices flow to create something cool, but it also takes a lot of detail work to get it right!

Whoah!

I only mentioned the quotes because I thought they might cause trouble if left out. Like I said, I'm fussy about it because everytime I make a mistake and leave something out, yet it works on my computers, it then doesn't work for some customer and they email me about it. So I've learned not to trust the reliability of non-standard code.

It seems to always comes back to bite me and I didn't want it to bite Skybird too.

I honestly had no idea you've been leaving out quotes regularly. And I've never experimented with leaving them out.

Yes, I've been doing commercial web sites since 1995, although real code was my main paycheck most of the time. That's why my personal web site is so horribly out of date. And links have broken in moving it from ISP to ISP.
I never get around to updating/fixing it. I really should - it's an embarrassment right now.

And - doing 15 years of software/firmware has also made me very anal about doing real code correctly too. Again, it's that thing about stuff working in the lab, but failing for the customer.