any bearded iris experts ?

If you know a bit about growing bearded iris you might be able to advise me. I have read a couple of good articles lately regarding bearded iris and as I'm quite keen to devote a little patch to them I wanted to get the soil preparation right. The problem is one article advises using manure in the soil prep and the other says do not use manure in the soil prep !
Any advise on which way to go please ?
gazania

 

Hi Gazania

Not a expert but have grown them before 3 houses ago.

Front of the border, full sun very well drained soil, dont let the other plants you grow crowd them out yes deffo manure (must be old stuff not newish) in the prep but dont go crazy with it if you cant get hold of any mix compost instead , add pea gravel to help the drainage, they are hungary plants and will reward with lots of flowers once they settle in plus I never used fertiliser apart from Seaweed Feed as I used growmore one year all leaves hardly any flowers , once all planted I would top dress with gravel which helped bake the Rhizomes ready for the following year the variety I grew was Blue Ryythm I think it was quite tall but amazing blue flowers havnt looked to see if still availabe.

Hope this helps a little

Spruce

 

Yes Spruce, that does help
There is quite a variety of colours and sizes to choose from and on the whole they appear quite easy to grow and look after.
I'm looking forward to picking up a couple.
gazania