Iris Pallida 2017

July 2017 finally came. And finally we had to start the new production of Iris. Actually we have quite an amount of Iris Germanica but the market seems not to like this kind of iris, even though we do believe that their quality is great.

We started to dig out the iris pallida we had: we thought to have just few numbers, but actually we acheved a huge amount. In the picture one of the first harvest

We proceeded than to split them and to prepare the new fields. The land became very hard and after we repaired the disaster of the flood a new little flood invested the land again (!) and we had to repair again.

 Bottom: these are the fields at the beginning. A hard work was expecting us!

At the end we were able to plant this week end the first 2 squares of iris pallida.

After planting we water them all! We do have 2 wells very usefull for this purpose: the water is absolutely pure and fresh.

A dam protecting the flowers from the flood.

I know that the oldies were telling me that a "bomba d'acqua"  (water bomb) like that of the past June happens once every 40 years, but I am wondering if I was so unlucky or simply it happens much more often.

I also have my personal idea: the rockets the cultivators of vineyards are usually shooting  towards the clouds to protect the their vineyards increase the gathering of the clouds on the sites not protected and hence increase the danger of a flood.

So I didn't trust their opinion and as usual I thought something out-of-normal to protect our flowers. Considering that the flood follows the inclination of the hill, I thought to protect the squares on the top through a dam in wood, around 20 cm inside the field and 20 cm outside.

 

So firstly I dug the fields (by hand!) to prepare a furrow about 20 cm deep (top)

 

 Then I added the foil to protect the wood (top)

 And finally I put the desks inside, stepping on every edge. They are really steady and ready to resist - I hope not - another flood

 

July 2017: Repairing the damages from the flood & cleaning the flowers

In the middle of the month of June 2017 a sudden "bomba d'acqua" (i.e. "water bomb) fell down -in the real sense - just on few villages of the zone: Magliano Alfieri, Castagnito and Govone, flooding our cultivation.
To be sincere, the long roots of the iris together with the foil held the fields quite good, even though a lot of land was carried away.
To make things worse, after the flood came "Caronte", i.e. the nickname given to the out-of-average heat that shocked fields and persons with temperatures  over 35° C.

The results were that the land became like stone, with little canyons running under the foils. The farmers of the zone that came to see it were a little bit worried how we could fix all. 
Well, it's very easy: will, force, work, labour and again will force, work etc. untill all it's ok.

Top: after removing the foil, this was the situation: little hard canyons!
Bottom: with hard work of hand the ground was all hoed by hand

After thal the foil was positioned as it was

Picture bottom: these are the fields with all the iris totally cleaned by hand. Hard work, but worthy!