March 2024

MISSOULA IRIS SOCIETY POTLUCK MEETING

SATURDAY, MARCH 2, 2024

6:30 PM

LOCATION:  830 South Avenue West, Immanuel Lutheran Church

 

Directions for the November Meeting at Immanuel Lutheran Church:

Coming from the south on Brooks Street:

Turn east, right, onto South Avenue at the stop light by the fair grounds, go past the fair grounds, and the church is just across from Sentinel High School. Parking is behind the church on Sussex. Turn left onto Bow Street from South Avenue and go one block to Sussex, turn left and the church is the second church on the left. Go to the parking lot at the rear of the church. Use the church entrance from the parking lot on Sussex.

 

Coming from the North, East or West:

Turn off Brooks onto Stephens Avenue, go past CVS and Walgreens on either side of Stephens.

Turn left on Central at the Missoula Manor. Go one block and turn right onto Holburn Street. Proceed one block to Sussex and there is the church and its parking lot. It is the first church on the west end. Use the church entrance from the parking lot on Sussex.

 

Take the elevator to the Parish Hall. Someone will be at the door to welcome you!

Call Betty Ann at 406.370.1696 if you have questions or get lost.

 

Member Delane Langton and Jane Tibbs have submitted an article for this newsletter entitled,

THE MEDIAN IRIS OF EAGLE RIDGE IRIS GARDENS 2023.

Thank you for your informative article.

 

2024 MISSOULA IRIS SOCIETY DUES ARE NOW PAYABLE! Dues are $10.00 a person.

Please remit to:  Swede Gustafson, Treasurer, 3128 Eldora Lane, Missoula, MT 59803.

 

You can refer to the December newsletter membership list attachment or your hard copy to check your dues status or email Swede at swedeandba@gmail.com if you have questions. 


American Iris Society members check your dues status! If you are interested in joining the American Iris Society, contact Betty Ann Gustafson, by email or phone, 406.370.1696.

 

 MARCH MEETING AGENDA: Discussion of our annual Missoula Iris Society Shows, etc,

 

Treasurers Report: March checking account balance:  $1704.45 (Dues are being deposited.)

 

The Missoula Iris Society would like to acknowledge Anita Cervenak, the publisher of the Missoula Iris Society newsletter and Ed Verplancke, manager of our website. Ed and Anita have been loyal hardworking members of our society for many years. Anita and Ed moved to Torrington, Wyoming a few years ago.

Anita had been working with our newsletter and chose to continue her work with the newsletter from Wyoming. She is responsible for publishing and distributing the newsletter by email and snail mail.

Ed keeps our website up to date. I have been contacted by people interested in our activities after checking out our website.

Thank you Anita and Ed!

  

Annual Rhizome Sale is Saturday,  July 26, 2024.

 

 

REMINDERS:

 

2024 AIS/Japanese National Iris Convention, Portland, OR June 26-June 29, 2024

Greater Portland Iris Society, of Portland Oregon, would like to invite you to the AIS National Convention with the Society for Japanese Irises in a joint Convention June 26th-29th, 2024. The Convention will entail a Welcome Banquet, Section Programs, several Judges Training sessions, Garden Tours, a Live Plant Auction, and the Closing AIS Awards Banquet. Go to the American Iris Society website for more details.

         

2025 AIS National Convention, June 2nd - 7th,  BILLINGS, MT

Meet us in Montana for Iris Under the Big Sky. (A brochure is in last month’s Missoula Iris Society newsletter.)

June 2nd - 7th 2025, Sponsored by the Big Sky Iris Club!
 2025 National Convention of the American Iris Society

      We would love to have you join us the first week of June 2025. Please see  the brochure  promoting it along with our website bigskyirisclub.com.  We also have a club Facebook page with the same name and one just for the convention that you can ask to join @ Big Sky Iris Convention 2025.  We have 6 gardens to tour on Thursday, Friday and Saturday after a full day of section meetings on Wednesday. The section meetings give you exposure to all the different classes of iris. Of special interest to members of the Reblooming Iris Society will be Eagle Ridge Iris Gardens, we specialize in rebloomers and grow some where in the neighborhood of 763 Reblooming cultivars. We have also begun to hybridize for rebloom and have seedlings in the pipeline. Other hybridizers have also sent Reblooming guest iris for the convention.

 

THE MEDIAN IRIS OF EAGLE RIDGE IRIS GARDENS 2023

 Delane H. Langton and Jane Tibbs

 

Median iris are favorites here and we grow LOTS of them. This last summer we received guest iris for the 2025 National Convention of the AIS. We requested medians as well as Tall Bearded (TB’s). One never knows with certainty, but we suspect they may be finished by convention time the first week of June. There have been plenty of times when the medians steal the show if spring arrives late. It may be suggested if these are your favorites, that you come ten days or two weeks early, maybe go to Yellowstone Park or Glacier Park. You can then catch the big show on the way back to Billings. We also intend to post median bloom on the Facebook pages as the show builds. We have two pages that are convention focused, Big Sky Iris Club  and Big Sky Iris Convention 2025. We would love to have you follow along and see how the iris perform in our Montana zone 4b. Median iris especially love our cold winters and dry summers, which is why we love them so much! They simply perform very well up north. 

 

We grow 200+ cultivars of MBD’s (dwarfs up to 8 inches), but this is about medians, so let’s take a look at those. Beginning with Standard Dwarf Bearded (SDB’S 8-16 inches). It’s not hard to tell which one is our favorite class, just look at how many we grow. We grow 1000+ varieties. There is, probably, no other garden around to see so many SDB’s in one place. We added 250 last year so the bloom in these two very long rows will be amazing in 2024 and mind blowing in 2025. Please come enjoy them with us. This is in addition of 6 rows of established SDB’s that we have sold for years. 

 

Rebloom is also a focus for us and we have thousands of seedlings coming. We are attempting to hybridize for all summer blooming SDB’s. Think about Autumn Jester, Sailboat Bay, and Sunbeams Forever along with SPX Eternal Summer, hence the name. 

 

Now let’s look at the classes that bloom next. The Intermediate Bearded (IB 16-27 1/2). This may be preaching to the choir here, but we think this is an under appreciated class. These are lower growing, vigorous iris that overlap the SDB’s and lead you into the other classes bloom. They withstand the wind and rain being shorter and on tougher stalks. Again, we grow lots of IB’s, but not as many as SDB’s. 

 

Aril irises (AR), also called desert iris, also bloom at this time. We do grow a couple of these, Eisblau and Turkish Topaz. These are extraordinarily beautiful. Arilbred Dwarf (ABD) and Arilbred Median (ABM) iris are also considered medians. We don’t have much experience with these yet, but have added some to our collection and will let you know how they do.

 

For us, again zone 4b, the next classes that come as the IB’s and late SDB’s finish are Miniature Tall Bearded (MTB’s) and Border Bearded (BB’s both 16-27 1/2 inches). These lead us right into the Tall Bearded (TB) bloom. We do grow lots of MTB’s and again they’re a favorite class. As we have struggled to get them started (maybe due to their small rhizome size?) we now pot them and establish a good root system before planting in the garden. Our July and August can be very hot and dry and with our dig and shipping season in full swing, we may have not paid enough attention to them and have lost many. That hits you right in the pocketbook. Our BB’S are in a couple of dedicated rows and are also woven in with the talls. This is probably a class we could pay more attention to too.   

 

We hope you enjoyed a little walk through our Median Display Garden as we ALL look forward to another bloom season. We are anxiously building up to “Meet Us In Montana for Iris under the Big Sky”. June 2-7, 2025

                                        Delane and Jane