2012 Peony New Beginnings

Dead Foliage in Peony Bed

2012, a new year, a new opportunity to see peony blossoms you've never seen before, to watch the growth of your existing plants, and reflect on growing seasons past. We have had such a mild winter so far. I am curious to see how this will affect the number and quality of the peony blooms. The weather was so warm I took the opportunity to do some cleaning up. I was out in my garden today cutting back dead peony foliage. However one of my peonies hadn't completely died back yet. It was the intersectional 'Yellow Crown' peony that so nicely produced a beautiful fall bloom for me last year. The foliage contained beautiful fall colors of red, orange, and gold. I went ahead and cut the remaining foliage off. Perhaps next year I will leave the foliage on as an experiment to see what happens.

Fall Colors of Peony 'Yellow Crown' with Dead Foliage of Peony 'Bartzella' in the Background

Peony 'Yellow Crown'

The Great Peony Massacre of 2011

So today I was cleaning up my peonies (late again, I know!), and I actually chopped off one of their heads. If you look at the pink bud in the middle of the picture, you'll notice that it has been decisively severed from its root. So here's the lesson for all of you. If you haven't cut down all of last year's peony stems yet, do it now before this year's stems and blooms are sacrificed. Don't wait too long so that you can prevent unnecessary bud loss. :-)

2009 Fall Peony Cleanup

It's time for winter. Today is the Winter Solstice in fact. So I am a little late cutting back the dead peony foliage this year, but I did get some of it done before winter. I spent some time yesterday removing the dead peony stems and leaves from the herbaceous peonies. The foliage can carry the spores from the botrytis blight and reinfect next years stems. So it is important to remove all stems and leaves from and put this dead foliage in the trash. It is important not to leave these remains or compost them, as the diseases may still propagate. Here are some photos of my 'Karl Rosenfield' peony before and after cleanup. As you can see the hot pink buds for next years stems are visible above ground. Since I live in a southern climate, it is important that the peony be planted at this depth to get the required amount of chilling hours required for flowering.

Peony 'Karl Rosenfield'

Another interesting thing I've noticed the past 2 winters is that one of the intersectional peonies that I have, 'Yellow Crown', sends up new shoots in late summer/early fall that don't seem to die back with the first frost and last for some time into winter. The original shoots from spring have died back, but the later growth still remains.

Peony 'Yellow Crown'

Another intersectional peony that I have, 'Bartzella', has kept above ground stems like a tree peony. I accidentally cut off one of the stems before I realized they had buds on them. I don't know if the stems will survive the winter, but since this peony has never produced any flowers, I am going to leave them in place. It will be an interesting experiment to see if they survive the winter and produce any flowers.

Peony 'Bartzella'