Rebloom Appears on Turkey Day
by
Mike Lockatell

My late mother taught me to always look for the silver lining in trying circumstances.This attitude has been particularly useful in coping with setbacks in my personal life including growing and developing cool season bearded iris rebloomers. Events happening this past spring were no exception.

Central Virginia experienced another mild winter this year. Cold and snow was minimal, so the growing season swung into high gear weeks ahead of schedule. Some tall bearded rebloom named varieties and seedlings were already in bloom at my South Richmond display planting in early April with standard dwarf beardeds (SDB) named varieties and seedlings. Median cross pollinations produced viable seed pods and conditions looked bright for more success with the tall beardeds. Fortunes however took an abrupt turn for the worse at my J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College plantings in rural Goochland County, VA. Frosts during April's final weekend destroyed peak flowering and seed pod sets!! Mom's lesson would save the day.

Late May and early June would see renewed flowering on cool season SDB rebloomers. Sporadic summer flowering would take place on some named varieties and seedlings. The busy hurricane season however would provide too much rain in August and September compromising roots in bearded iris clumps. Thanks to warm daytime air being pumped into our region particularly in October and November, developing bloomstalks continued to emerge. As always, Jack Frost would finally find our address. The party was over, or was it?

BP Market

The late Edwin Rundlett from Staten Island, NY created and edited “The Reblooming Iris Reporter” in starting in the early 1960s to popularize fall flowering bearded irises. The July 1963 edition (No.#2) included a chart from the Climatography of the United States No,#60 concerning Mean Date of Last 32°F Temperature in Spring to the First 32F° in Autumn. The measurement yields the Mean Length of Freeze Period (Days). This value is 220 days for metro Richmond with an initial frost coming on November 8th each year. Give or take a few days, this data has proven to be a very accurate yardstick for choosing the best named cool season rebloom varieties in all classes for our micro-climate in Central Virginia.

TB Re Soda Fountain Shuffle

The good news in a terrible year featuring the Covid-19 pandemic, killing frosts waited an additional week plus to finally appear. Peak flowering lasted an incredible month in length over October and November. After two mornings in the mid twenties, the show was finally over for my plantings at JSRCC (about 45 minutes from my home in South Richmond). My display bed at BP Market, 9200 Midlothian Turnpike, North Chesterfield, VA seemed to have suffered a similar fate, but this conclusion turned out to be premature.

TB Re Autumn Circus

Even though many open flowers and bloomstalks were severely damaged by the cold, there were survivors. Thanksgiving Day saw a daytime temperature in the low seventies, A rebloom survey found many familiar tall bearded varieties still in flower. Wow!! TB Re Autumn Circus (Hager, 1990), Gate of Heaven (Zurbrigg, 2004), I Repeat (J. Roberts, 1998), Over & Over (Innerst, 2000), Pink Attraction (E. Hall, 1988), Rosalie Figge (McKnew, 1993) and Unchained Melody (Mahan, 1999) led the way. Lockatell originations in bloom were TB Re Soda Fountain Shuffle (Lockatell, 2015) and Hidden Sky (Lockatell, R. 2019).

TB Re Sdlg.#21424-9

Lockatell TB Re Sdlg.#21424-9 White or (TB Re Harvest of Memories (Zurbrigg, 1985) X TB Re Just Call Me (Wilkerson, 2008) was added to the display bed in late 2019. This pure white with yellow beards and 36-38” nicely branched bloomstalks flowered multiple times starting in October. Three blooms were still intact and open on Turkey Da

SDB Re Baby Blessed
Broullon

MTB Re Lady Emma (F.P. Jones,1986) and TB Re Cricket Song (Silvers, 2012), IB Re Constant Companion (Marsh, 1995) and TB Re Midsummer Night's Dream (Baumunk, 1999) plus SDB Re Baby Blessed (Zurbrigg, 1979) were also in flower. Lady Emma, Constant Companion and Baby Blessed are solid fall performers for me each year and great selections for the novice iris gardener.

TB Re Rosalie Figge

Day and night temperatures on many days during November were double digits above normal. Rebloom stalks were abundant and flower buds matured rapidly thanks to
the abnormally warm weather. Considering our continued struggles with the pandemic throughout the year, Mother Nature was looking out for all of us. Joyce Lockatell's belief in silver linings came true for me once again.

TB Re Unchained Melody

TB Re Pink Attraction