2016 New fields

Dear Friends,
this summer and early autumn were quite rich of works. We menaged to plant around 2700 iris germanica, 1700 iris pallida and an experimental 7 iris germanica "superstition" (i.e. black-purple colours). (Village of Govone, in the Roero's Land)

This means that in the year 2019 this implantation will provide about 13.500 new rizhomes of iris. The main challenge of this was to prepare all the terrain with special foils on a so huge surface. I think the result is quite impressive and we are really glad of its final result. We can't wait to see the blossoming flowers covering  this little valley.
Well, I have to admit that in November 2015 this same field was in this way (bottom)

 With a lot of work and with some phantasy we transformed it.

 The result is this

Thanks for watching

Different types of Iris

Dear Friends

when we started this adventure we had some ideas about iris. Actually it was quite tough to find any complete explanation about this flowers.

After a little while, we were by the way able to fully understand the differences between the flowers and we also understood their different behaviour.

Let's try to make it clear to everyone, in a very simple way: we could divide the types of iris in 4 different kinds.

1) Iris Germanica
2) Iris Pallida (Dalmatica)
3) Iris Florentina
4) Iris Pseudocorus
5) Iris Hybrida

We think that some pictures from our fields can explain far better the differences between them:

IRIS GERMANICA (violet colour - 50 cm high, intense flavour)

 IRIS PALLIDA (pale violet colour - 50/100 cm high - very intense and delicate flavour)

 IRIS HYBRID (intense red colour - 70 cm high - very intense flavour)

 IRIS PSEUDOCORUS (yellow colour - 70 cm hign - no flavour)

 IRIS FLORENTINA (white colour - 70 -100 cm high - very intense and delicate flavour)

 Some more examples of Hybrids of Iris Pseudocorus and of Iris Germanica)

The Roero Project

Our farm is located in Barbaresco, in the Province of Cuneo, Region Piedmont (Northern Italy). The climate here is extremly favourable for the production of high quality wines like Barbaresco (and Barolo), Roero, Roero Arneis, Barbera and so on.

Our idea was quite new: instead of planting wineyards we decided to use this precious land to produce iris roots to be used for babies teething and for production of essential oil for perfumerie.

This is the entrance to our farm with all its products: the vineyards of Barbaresco wine (on the left), the hazelnuts trees (on the right) for the superb chocolate, and the blossoming Iris Germanica (picture April 2016)

The idea was acutally to use this rich and tastfull land also for producing the roots for iris.
So we started to use the little plot of land that still were not used, as in the picture below

 Bottom: the farm

 

Nonetheless the need for an increasing production forced us to expand the places where we cultivate the iris, and from Barbaresco (in the so called "Langhe" region) we moved to the close "Roero" region, to use a plot of land specifically dedicated to the production of iris.

So we used a little plot of land of my grandmother, normally not cultivated 

Then, after long discussions we found a new and bigger plot in the Govone village.

It was a woodland - even though it was before a vineyards - and we decided to clean it up and prepare for the plantation of the first big plot of iris for July 2016;

Below: the new plot of land in Govone Village as it appeared in April 2016 and then how it was deeply ploughed to be ready for the implantation (June 2016); I think the difference is quite visible.

The beauty of the flowers

Usually, people working with flowers show off the beauty of the colours of the petals. 
I decided to show you some pictures of the magic of the blossoming flowers.

Season 2016 - Works on progress

Dear Friends,

these very last days were very busy for us. We spent a lot of tough working hours in order to clean and further transform our cultivation of iris.

As I would like to say, our aim is a production 100% natural. This means that all the works done on the flowers must be done without the use of any chemical product. This is our philosophy and we keep up to this goal.

Actually the situation we found was really bad: because of the huge rains of April 2016, May 2016 and June 2016 and the very sunny days of the end of June itself the grass grew very fast and tall.
We had to intervene to clean everything but also to find a solution to this fact, otherwise we will have a lot of costs for the maintenance of the fields.

The idea was to increase the surface of the foils to block the growth or the grass.

The picture above shows the end of the (hard) works we did. The flowers of the iris are now totally cleaned and they are growing very well. The quality of the roots is also increasing and the works are now easier to achieve.

Below: the long foil before cutting: 100 m!

 The situation when we started to work.