SurvivingInfidelity.com^®

I started growing flowers and sharing them during the pandemic. I had some I inherited, some that were gifted, and a housemate who was good with a shovel :)

This year I decided to sell some very reasonably to test growing flowers as a potential source of income.

Same housemate dug some for the first sale and we were horrified when we noticed spots on the leaves and a few brown leaves. I started looking around and most everyone's iris have issues this year.

Any iris gardeners in the crowd?

I grew glads, zinnias and sunflowers for several years, and what this sounds like is a bug: thrips. Look closely at the roots if you can remove the covering dirt, and see if you notice little bore holes. Dang things.

In my tiny farmers markets I sold them at, I found most people were coming to buy the fresh veggies, and most of them would ooh and aaah at my flowers, then walk on by or maybe they would buy a couple stems. I was pricing them too affordably, as I thought people would take advantage of the colorful bounty and choose to make their own bouquets. Well, out here in the country, not so much...a fellow vendor advised me to make arrangements and sell them for a bit more, but that wasn't my gift...then the pandemic shut our church down, which was my main purpose in growing the flowers. But markets are different everywhere. I still believe there is a way to do it!

Did you have a late freeze? I had spots on some of my spring flower leaves due to this.
Iris are pretty hardy and as long as the tuber is hard and firm and dry 8t should be fine. My Iris have been magnificent this year and my Peonies are the biggest and prettiest they have ever been.

Thanks Tush we had a number of 80/30 days....80 one day and 30 seemingly the next ..

Superesse the rhisomes look great. All of the flowers except the bright yellow ones look great (saw a couple of black bugs on them ugh).

Yes, I have seen those black bugs (sort of long like a firefly?) crawling on my lilies at the ground level! I need to spray. Glad to hear the rhizomes are fine. I spray with Permethrin I get from the farmer's Cooperative.

But this crazy and too-dry late winter/cold spring weather has affected all my bulb flowers in a similar way: they are a lot shorter and the earliest (Asiatic) lilies are forming smaller heads. Although like Tushnurse's, my yellow irises were best ever. They face South against the house wall, and love dry soil. The ones out on the North side are just now deciding to bloom.

Gardening is an endless learning experience, isn't it?

Superesse

Little bugs like some kind of nasty borer/weevil creature.
😡

I have never seen that before.
But onwards and upwards.