Cutting back damaged or sickly iris foliage can help prevent the disease from hurting your plants in the next growing season.
Make a note on the calendar each time a frost occurs. Once 3-4 frosts occur, you can get ready to cut back your irises.
Any kind of shears of trimmer will work for this, as long as it cuts your plants in a straight, even line.
This is more effective if you have a lot of irises in your garden. If you only have a few irises, it won’t make a huge difference if you fan the leaves or not.
Double-check your town’s compost regulations before adding anything new to your bin.
Ideally, you should divide your irises every 3-5 years to prevent your flowers from overcrowding one another. [10] X Research source Clark Hill. Plant Specialist & VP of Operations, Platt Hill Nursery. Don’t divide your irises in winter—at this point, they’re just starting regrowth, and dividing them will cause a setback.
This will make it easier to dig up your irises, and will help your plants focus on nurturing their roots instead of their leaves.
Because of the way they grow, all of your irises will be in clumps instead of growing as individual flowers.
The goal of this process is to split apart individual rhizomes, which will make your irises easier to replant.
Watch out for iris borers, which are white worms that feed on irises. Unhealthy or rotted rhizomes tend to have a foul odor, and may feel really light or hollow. If you’d like to go the extra mile, you can sanitize your shears or cutting tool with a mixture that’s 9 parts water and 1 part bleach. This will kill any potential bacteria and make the division process more sanitary.
The rhizome is brown, while the rest of the iris plant is green.
Irises need to be watered on an as-needed basis, but not daily.
