Plucking Bulbs

Went over to a friend's house to help her with her garden the other day. She had planted a few irises (like 6 or so) a few years ago in her flower bed, and babied them very thoroughly, thus the plants had rewarded her hard work by running rampant, taking over her entire flower bed and pushing the bed out be about 1/2" a year in an effort to take over the yard as well. *chuckle*

Those are some healthy irises!

She said they needed thinning something serious if they were to be kept from eventually turning the entire yard into an iris patch, so she called a friend and offered her some of the bulbs when they were ready.

Having a designated home for them, she called her nearest garden expert, and asked me if I could come over and show her how to separate the excess bulbs safely so that they would grow well when they are replanted later this fall in their new location, while not damaging the ones that remained.

My duty, to pull iris bulbs, and teach her how to do it safely, pulling up enough to not drastically impact the fullness of her patch, but thin them out enough that there is enough room for expansion in the next couple of years, as well as room to plant some other colors this fall. Also, make sure they wouldn't forcefully expand into the yard even further in the next year or so.

We found a clear space of time for this fabulously easy and fun activity, and made our way on over. Keebler had really wanted to help us dig, but he had a meeting at work, so couldn't do more than just stop by and say hello before he had to head out.

But the rest of us had a blast!

Ladybug had a terribly fun and stimulating math class on our hostess's kitchen floor, Littlebit got to play computer games, and we all got to play on their Wii for a bit when all the work was done.

She even treated us to a lovely dinner of the very first turkey she had ever baked, and it turned out magnificently!

How many irises did we end up pulling? 182 deep purple-black bulbs, and 48 undefined colors, most of which are probably also black, but we weren't quite sure, so they went into the other bucket.

All in all, we had a lot of fun, pulled up all that needed gone from one of her patches of irises, learned some new things, and left with full tummies, a bucket of mixed iris bulbs to plant elsewhere, and light hearts.