All the Dirt on Gardening

White Cemetery Iris Fellow traveler on the gardening path, Russell Studebaker, shared some of his White Cemetery Iris corms with us this week. He said they have to be thinned periodically and we were lucky enough to have visited when they were still available. TX A & M Extension has a couple of entries about these heirloom bulbs. ..."   first used in North Africa as a decoration on gravesites, from there to Spain, and finally to the New World. It's a species cross that is unable to make seeds on its own, but spreads by being passed from hand to hand. You will often see it blooming where once a house stood, and it's able to survive unaided in pastures along the roadside, often half-buried in tall grasses and other wild flowers. The flash of blue-tinged white blooms give the plant's location away in the spring." " Iris should be planted with the tops of the rhizomes almost out on the surface of the ground. They do not need coddling with extra wate...