Wow, greysmith, I'm almost tempted to send you all of my cuttings in exchange for one each of all of your irises....lol. I love irises and have always said I want one of every color.  It's late and I can't remember off hand what all I have right now. I will message you tomorrow.

These are some beautiful plants. You guys are making me go out and get some irises for my yard!! I especially like the blue ones!!!

We set up with some of my wife's pottery and my iron work at a little local garden/craft show yesterday. It was at a historic house site so I took some took some of the "historic" iris... didn't sell a single one, that was depressing. There was someone else there selling fancy bearded, so I came back with more iris than I took. Got some beauties though.

It's not the best time for transplanting them, but I've bought a lot of them at flea markets with the bloom on and they've done fine. The trick to planting them then is to stake them up. If you don't hey just fall over. The better way is to wait till they start to die back from the heat, dig them with as many roots as you can, cut off the foliage (leaving about 3 inches to write on for a label), then dry them. Replant in early fall so they have time to settle in before winter. The biggest reason for iris not blooming is that they're planted to deep. They want their bare backs exposed to the sun.

When we set up we put a jar of cut iris on the table (you'd think a potter could throw a vase wouldn't you). I found an old iron iris I'd made and hadn't gotten around to using, wirebrushed off most of the rust and stuck it in with the real iris. It was fun watching people spot it, and funny how many didn't.
 

Our neighbor came by with her carpenter. He's an old friend who's been coming up from Georgia to build her house as part of some barter arrangement they've had. He's been around for most of a year, on and off, and has known I'm a blacksmith but hasn't seen any of my work. He seemed suitably impressed, his purchase made up over half of our days sales'. On the way home we dropped by and gave her all the iris we hadn't sold to help landscape her new yard. Here's a picture of one of the yellow flag beds in her old yard.
 

Those fronds are almost 4 feet tall, and that's maybe a quarter of the ones she has. She started out with a grocery bag full 7-8 years ago when she lived in Ga. and all she does to maintain them is dig some, now and then, to give away. They've crowded out Johnston grass.

When I was digging the ones to take to the show I found a solid mass of Johnston grass roots underneath them, more roots than dirt. I'm pretty sure that's the problem with the varieties I have that aren't thriving. Johnston grass, we hates it gollum, we hates it.

The iris blooms are about played out. I was out enjoying the last of them and discovered one of those ruffled yellows hiding down in a place it had no business being. If it hadn't bloomed it would have gone out as a thornbird.
  It looks white in the photo but it's a pale yellow. I'm remembering them as being darker. This bloom is getting a little long in the tooth so maybe they're darker when they first open.

Now I've got dogbane and yellow dock competing with the Johnston grass in crowding out the iris. I just bought some more iris from a lady who's been selling them and is trying to close out for health reasons. She was telling me about this wonderful weed killer that would solve all my weed problems. Problem is that all of mine look way healthier than any of hers, even the ones of mine  that are getting crowded out by the weeds are green, just stunted and not multiplying. The foliage on hers looks sorry, now, like mine will look in mid-July when I dig them. I haven't been watering mine, or fertilizing them (she was also telling me what fertilizer to use), so I'm pretty sure I know what makes the difference. I brought the ones I bought home, cleaned them, and potted them in weed killer free soil. The more I look at the options the more I'm willing to do the work to stay organic.