Nope, not yet marciaz3. The ground is still much too cold for them to be planted out. Best to wait until after the last frost date in your area. I usually don't dig anything until the May long weekend or plant anything until night time temperatures have been between 5 and 10 degrees for at least a week and that makes it around the first week in June or so. Much better chance of them settling in when the soil is warmed.

BJ in SW MB

Thanks, BJ - guess i'll still be scrambling for windowsill space! LOL

Marcia,
who wishes that she had a greenhouse

Marcia, I put my siberian and TB outside in the pot's on the south side of the house. I too was out of room. I've put my lilies, a rose, daylily and a hosta outside as well. They have been out since last weekend. At night I put them into my little greenhouse, so they don't even come in at night.
I even have my petunias, gazinia, dianthus, snapdragons and osteospermum out there too.
It toughens them up, even though they are all pretty tough. It has slowed down the annuals growing process too. Which is good because I do not want them lanky.

Shelley

I was considering doing the same thing, Shelley, but our low temperatures are supposed to be close to 0° all week. I did put my potted lilies outside today (they have minimal growth) and they should be okay.

Usually i use my cold frame for getting things outside a little early so i'll have to get it over to the patio to start warming it up a bit.

Brenda's indoor method for overwintering TB Irises that are purchased very late is ideal, but for Siberians, those are tough plants in our zone. Or did you perhaps receive them extremely late Marcia that you needed to store them indoors?

Dear Marcia's DH, please build her a greenhouse! ;)

Sharon

Here's a tip I used for overwintering a fuscia. I got this tip from an English gardening magazine, I think it was BBC which is also on line. First you prune back the fuscia. Then you line a box with newpaper, a good insulator. You put the fuscia inside the box and pack in more newspaper. Cover the plant with the newpaper and set the box in a cold greenhouse. It worked out fine. I was wondering if you could do similar with your iris but put them in a cooler instead and set them outside closing the lid at night. I don't know how cold it gets at night there but do you think that would work? Just thought it worth mentioning. marric.

Sharon, i did receive those irises fairly late. I planted them, but then when i mentioned it here, Brenda suggested that i bring them in for the winter, so i did.

The night temperatures this week are supposed to be in the range of -2 to +4. I'm going to get my cold frame brought over and put on the concrete patio to warm up for a day or so and then i'll bring the irises out and leave them in there until the ground is warmer. I'm also going to put the cover on the mini greenhouse to warm that up too and maybe get the petunias out there in a few days.

Sharon, i'm going to have to get my daughter to tell dh that mom really needs a greenhouse. He listens to her! :)

Three years ago I had a customer receive her order of 45 iris varieties the Monday after the Grey cup Game. I planted them for her the first or so of December. Some of the ground was getting frost and I wacked it with a pick, put in a bit of soil and put the Irisis in and watered them. About 40 did just fine and bloomed the next year (probably as good a survival if planted them a month earlier).

In spring I'll plant iris, lilies and a few others as soon as I can get into the soil At the end of March or early April. No issue at all. Once the ground is thawed at all it's not going to refreeze in spring. The issue with many plants is if they put on above ground growth will the 'green' survive a cold snap.

There's a lot of confusion about planting dates. The 'frost free' season has nothing to do with hardy perennials. Our garden culture has mixed up planting some tender annuals and vegetables and perennials. Even most tender annuals (exceptions begonias, fushias and a few others) can take a few degrees of minus c of air temperature because the ground from mid April onward is warmer than the air temperature...the reason snow melts so quickly.

That's interesting Plantcompost because I tried a few times to plant iris in September and they never survived. That's one of the reasons that I had pretty much given up on growing irises, until last year when I met some people who were very knowledgeable about growing iris in our zone. Now I'm happy to see that all of the new irises I planted last year are growing already.

Marcia, since your irises are used to the 20*C temperatures, plopping them into 5*C soil would be quite a shock to them, so hardening them off first in your cold frame will do the trick.