These are my finding with overwintering the following plants:


note - all are bare root, without soil or gravel.

1. Iris roots and tubers float - i left them to float and they froze for a couple days on the surface layer and seem to complelely alive these last days following the freeze. Therefore, I took a bunch of bird netting and i entangled them in the bird netting and sank the netting to the bottom with stones. The bottom is 30". I hope they dont rot under all that depth.

1a. im leaving 3 irises floating on the surface for the winter to see if those will also survive.

2. Arrowhead bulbs: all the roots disintegrated in the gravel substrate leaving behind these 1 cm" peach-pink bulbs that are alive. I took them out of the gravel and droped them to the bottom of the pond - they don't float - only a few immature ones do; these seem the easiest to handel. I wonder if they would survive if i left them in the 4" margin shallow where they would freeze solid?

3. Pickerel plant: they float - i sank all 3 to the bottom - they seem to be black with rot and have each a small green sprout or two. i dont know what is a good way to assure the dont rot, in the future.



any ideas?

Iris are pretty strong withstanding the cold and ice. I've never depotted arrowhead to examine the overwintering tubers. As for the pickerel, we discussed that at length before. Mine sometimes rot and sometimes not. I don't have really anything else to add aside from what I said before.