On 27/03/2013 1:53 PM, Janet Bostwick wrote:

> My water iris are doing great in the creek.

Apparently it is considered an invasive species here. I have been
removing any that pop up in the streams on my property. I am careful
about invasive plants. We somehow got purple loosestrife around here and
it has been overwhelming wetland. Marshy areas that used to have ponds
and cattails are now often filled with loosetrife instead. Two yeas ago
my neighbour bought some water lettuce for their pond and it was
contaminated with Azolla, aka Feathered Mosquito Fern. Holy cow that
stuff grew and propagated like nothing I have ever seen. Within days it
had covered the surface of the pond. I helped them remove vast
quantities, skimming it off the surface, but it seemed to be growing
back as fast as we could skim it off.

We would get about 3/4 of it off by the afternoon and the next morning
it covered the entire pond again. It looked horrible and it was
blocking the light to the natural plants below. They were really
frustrated. I had read that it was not hearty enough to survive our
winters, so we figured that the best hope was that it would die off in
the winter. Luckily it did. They were very careful of what they put in
the pond after that.



> Regular iris need thinning again.

I can't say that mine need thinning, though I have dug some up and
transplanted them,


> I've tried ginger and it never came up.

I have made several attempts. I planted it one year and nothing happened
until the next year. I planted quite a bit last year and it sprouted.
I just left it, hoping that it would survive the winter and reappear in
abundance this year. I don't know if it matters that I had bought in the
produce department of the grocery store rather than a garden shop. Given
my experience with calla lilies it didn't occur to me that they had to
be particularly fresh.




> Maybe I
> didn't give it enough time. Should I be trying to start in the
> summer, outdoors in a pot instead of starting in winter?

If you try enough methods on is bound to work. It can be like my
Forsythia, which my wife refers to as "the F word". It grows beautifully
in this area. Most of our neighbours have some. There was a highway
overpass where it had gone wild and it was was aan impressive flower
show in the spring every year. We have several forsythia bushes and
most years we could easily count the number of yellow flowers that came
out, usually a total of less than 20. I tried everything. I moved them,
putting some in drier locations and some damper locations. I tried
different fertilizers. I tried leaving them along. I tried light
pruning, heavy pruning, pruning at different times. A couple years ago
I got fed up and cut them back almost to the ground. The next year
there was actually a fair number of flowers.

I don't get it. That stuff grows wild and flowers beautifully around
here, but ours is a flop.