Very true. I just stopped by to see what's going on. I'll come back tomorrow and post if all goes according to plan.

@arilbred, what kind of Iris do you grow?

Arilbreds and talls used to be more sibs and Japanese damn voles

I just finished cleaning up my iris bed it took my a couple of days. I pulled all the weeds and put down some prem. Hopefully that will help next time I have to pull weeds.

Looks nice and tidy now, Heath.

Thanks Ken there were a lot of weeds and it took forever. Hopefully I won't let it get that bad again.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, right?

Yep. That's why I love to use prem.

I have never used Preen so don't know anything about that product. I simply mulch heavily and pull some weeds along the way.

The only thing prem does is it keeps seeds from germinating it doesn't kill what is already there. So if I didn't get all the roots from those weeds they will come back. I mainly use on my iris bed because I don't like to mulch it.

That was a lot of work, Heath, but the display will be well worth it. I'm looking forward to seeing them in bloom.

Thanks Carole... I'm not expecting much in blooms this year I've neglected this iris bed for the last 2 years. I'm hoping I can do a major overhaul on it late this summer. I want to dig them all up and add new soil and compost, divide and replant.

Sounds like a plan. Keep us posted, please.

I did that this past summer Heath over here in Rockford tn

@arilbred Rockford... Your just down the road. I wanted to do mine last summer but I got busy. I hoping I can do more gardening this year.

Closer than you think I work in Seymour

We're practically neighbors I work full-time for the city of Pigeon Forge and I work part-time at David's Nursery in Seymour. When your ready to put your vegetable garden in you should come see us we got two green houses that are just full of annual and vegetable seedlings.

We veggie garden in Bledsoe Tn

East Tennessee gardener here in Elizabethton/Carter County. Just found/joined the site. Recently started listening to All Things Plants POD Casts, which is how I found this site. I am trying a 4ft X 8ft raised garden bed this year and I hope it does better than my previous attempts at gardening. My father used to grow a HUGE garden behind our home but I just can't seem to get it right. Several years back I had a garden (roughly the same size as the raised bed) that did yeld lots of squash and green beans, but no real tomatoes, pumpkins, peppers, carrots or watermelon. I tried a container garden a year or so after that and got squat! My employer has a community garden where they assign bed plots to whomever is interested, so I grew in one of their beds last year. It yelded LOTS of small yellow (tear drop shaped) tomatoes, a few regular red tomatoes, a few cucumbers, LOTS of banana peppers and a decent amount of green peppers. I feel like I haven't truly grasped what needs to be in the soil and if I need to put miracle grow or something similar on my plants. Any advice or info would be appreciated. I think I'm missing the basic needs of growing a good garden.

Thanks!
Home Grown Momma