Irises are very drought-tolerant, so unless you are gardening in extreme drought or arid desert conditions, it really shouldn't be necessary to provide supplemental water to established irises.

If your rhizomes are planted less than 1" below the soil surface, they probably don't need to be uncovered or lifted. If you feel they are planted too deeply, you will need to lift them. Just removing the extra soil from over the tops of them will create a depression that will hold rainwater and promote rot, and you don't want that! If you do decide to lift them, do it now. The sooner you get the irises planted the way you want them, the more time they'll have to reestablish their root systems and settle in before first frost.

Any "clean up" of clumps should be accomplished as soon as possible for the same reason stated above.

Dwarfs and medians are definitely less fussy than most TBs, in my experience. That's why I convert more and more of my space to them each year.

Laurie

How much sunlight are your iris getting, if is anything less than 5 or 6 hours that might explain the lack of bloom.

All my irises get full sun for most of the day, very close to all day. I truly doubt that's the issue. Now crowding with other plants... I have lots of volunteer annuals all over but none that would shade the irises out or actually out-compete them.

I've been here 6 summers now and 4 of the 6 have been described as "drought conditions" by the farmers in the area and by the weather people. This spring has been extremely dry (as in, almost no rain) and now we have these hot, hot winds blowing. So it is fairly extreme.

I think I'm going to lift the plants in one section. I haven't divided/cleaned up a clump yet and I guess this summer is the time to do that in another section and amend the soil while I am at it. I thought I had to wait till August so thanks for the heads up about doing it now. I will probably need to water them after digging them up with such heat and lack of rain?

Spent an hour with the iris catalogue last night and focussed on SDB and MDB types.

Thanks for your help.

cnid

If it's been drought conditions water them after transplant. Give them a good watering and then be sparing for about a week and that's it. They really don't need much water. Most times I don't bother.
Do any soil amending while you have them out and dividing. No reason for that other than it's easier while dividing.
Little composted manure does a lot to hold moisture and add nutrients. Iris don't even need real rich soil. With a few odd exceptions most of the bearded iris ancestors come from places that tend to have dry rocky, poor soil. The ones that didn't were found in a bit of a microclimate that was well drained and rocky.

You must be in western Ont. Here in New Hampshire and neighboring Quebec we are having the wettest season I can remember. Spring was cold and wet and now summer is hot and wet. I replanted my vegetable garden 3 times and still I have lots of blank spots where things just rotted or washed away. The thuderstorms have been wild. The town hall was struck by lightening yesterday and caught fire. Little damage. Several barns were taken out. I could hear the walls here clicking with electricity. My daughter reached to turn the TV off and got a mild shock she could feel go out one leg. Have forced hot air ducts in the walls and one lit up bright green and yellow and shot sparks. My daughter was real scared, wanted to leave. Had to stay and watch for fire/smoke. A 250+ year old home would pretty much burst into flames if it caught. I actually moved the house critters into one spot so I could do a quick evacuation if need be.

I actually feel kind of guilty, I promised Laurie and a couple other folks some of my wild versicolor iris. I can't even get to them. I'd have to have waders and rope myself to a tree for safety. I've taken logs off 6 foot fence posts that the river has thrown on them several times now. It's flash flooded twice where I've had 3 or 4 feet of river in places where it's usually pasture. Moose can't take their usual walk away from my fences so they have come in closer to the house and just walk right through the wire. It's been wet and wild! I'd share some of the rain if I could for sure.

Kind of odd but last year when I was moving my plants from my old house to this one something made me really raise the rows where I put the extra iris. Mounded them right up a foot or more even though the garden sits on a flat spot that is 6 feet higher than the pastures. I didn't raise my beardless and actually stuck them on the side that gets hit with the flooding first. Nothing to indicate flooding when I did it other than the garden soil has a lot of fine river silt and sand. For whatever reason I'm glad I listened to my inner voice. That back bed has been under water almost on a weekly basis since May. Drains quick but still not good.

Same experience as Laurie. The SDB and other little ones do much better here standing up to the weather. Most of my little ones didn't bat an eye at the weather and a recent transplant. Can't say that for the big fancy ones. Some are fine, others are just waiting out for next year and better weather.

On the bright side I have gotten to see some awesome rainbows and I do have a bumper crop of mosquito eating frogs and toads this year.

Here in Michigan we had a cool spring and a late frost when bloom stalks were developing. When I cleaned up the iris on this past Sunday I found many bloom stalks undeveloped. I figure that it was the last cold weather that got the flowers this year.
Ruth

Suenh - I am in Eastern Ontario. We had a cold start to spring but dry. A couple weeks of extremely hot, in early April, so the snow melted really fast and ran off instead of sinking in. Then cold again but sunny and dry right up to the end of May (some of the things I planted on the May long weekend died from cold and wind-stress). One basement flooding downpour in April and a good downpour in early June. Since early June, it has been HOT with unbelievably drying winds and no rain. About as different from your weather as is possible. But I don't mean to complain - the weather you describe is unreal! The part about the electricity in your house - that is scary! (And thanks for the tip about putting the critters in one place when there is a chance of an emergency - I sometimes wondered what I would do...).

Ruth - from your experience, it sounds like it wasn't a great year for irises in this part of the world. Although in a nearby town, in gardens where I assume people water regularly, there were gorgeous irises blooming like mad.

I was on Chuck Chapman's website and there are some gorgeous short and intermediate irises. That's what I'll be ordering this summer.