2016 Truck Load of New Mulch for Peonies

I was happily surprised to get a call last week while I was at work asking if I still needed a truck load of mulch. I had been worrying about getting some ever since the last guy I knew who would bring me free mulch had his phone number disconnected. I had called around to several tree service companies inquiring about free wood chips a couple weeks ago, but I hadn't heard anything yet. So I was very grateful when I got this call. The tree service man kept asking me was I sure I needed a whole truck load? Each time I replied Yes! I told him I was away, but he was more than welcome to leave it at the end of my driveway. So on Friday when I got home from work, I found this beautiful, very large pile of mulch in my driveway. Now I can keep the weeds at bay around my peonies while gradually adding valuable organic matter to the soil over time. :-)

2016 Intersectional Peonies Suffered Frozen Bud Blast

Nope. Not even all of the intersectional peonies were able to withstand that late cold winter blast last spring. You would think with their tough guy image and strong tree peony like woody stems, they would just shrug off a cold blast. Unfortunately some varieties had blasted buds and some had both blasted buds and a reduction in blooms from the previous year. Not all of my intersectional peonies are rated here. Some of them were too small and/or immature to evaluate or there was not enough data to make a proper evaluation. Check out the table below to see who suffered in the cold...

Intersectional Peonies with Buds Blasted by Late Freeze
Peony Variety	2015 Bloom	2014 Bloom	Blast Rate	Bloom Reduction
Peony 'Little Darlin'	0 of 3	4 of 4	100%	100%
Peony 'Scarlet Heaven'	0 of 2	2 of 2	100%	100%
Peony 'Morning Lilac'	1 of 3	8 of 8	67%	88%
Peony 'Pastel Splendor'	3 of 3	10 of 10	0%	70%
Peony 'Sonoma Amethyst'	7 of 7	16 of 21	0%	56%
Peony 'Julia Rose'	8 of 8	10 of 10	0%	20%
Peony 'Garden Treasure'	13 of 16	15 of 15	19%	13%

2015 Intersectional Peony Garden
There were however several varieties which did shrug off that winter cold, seemingly unaffected by the late frost, that did not suffer any reduction in bloom or bud blast. These intersectional peonies all increased (or maintained) their bloom counts. Only one of these varieties suffered some bud blast. I am amazed to see three of Don Smith's Japanese named Intersectional Peonies sold by Monrovia as the top three in this list! I'm guessing the other Japanese named peony in that collection is not on this list only because it was too immature in my garden to evaluate. I am also not surprised to see Peony 'Cora Louise' on this list which was nominated for the APS Gold Medal last year, and it almost won, Peony 'Bartzella' which already won the APS Gold Medal in 2006, and Peony 'Keiko' a 2015 Southern Peony Best Performer.

Intersectional Peonies Unaffected by Late Freeze
Peony Variety	2015 Bloom	2014 Bloom	Blast Rate	Bloom Increase
Peony 'Yumi' 由美 (Possess Beauty)	3 of 3	0 of 0	0%	300%
Peony 'Keiko' 愛幕 (Adored)	35 of 35	9 of 9	0%	288%
Peony 'Takara' 慈悲 (Treasure)	19 of 19	6 of 6	0%	216%
Peony 'Cora Louise'	11 of 11	5 of 5	0%	120%
Peony 'Copper Kettle'	2 of 4	1 of 1	50%	100%
Peony 'Yellow Crown'	11 of 11	6 of 6	0%	83%
Peony 'Bartzella'	7 of 7	4 of 5	0%	75%
Peony 'White Emperor'	9 of 9	9 of 9	0%	0%

Intersectional Peony 'Keiko' 愛幕 (Adored)

2016 Mid Season Peonies Suffered Frozen Bud Blast

After finishing my 2016 Peony Data Entry in Winter Time, I remembered not just how many 2015 Early Peonies Suffered Frozen Bud Blast, but also how many mid season peonies suffered bud blast last year as well. It was painfully obvious during my data entry when Peony 'Red Charm' did not even have a bloom date since all of its buds were blasted (and Peony 'Red Charm's bloom date is usually used as the basis for the bloom date offset). I have already compiled the data on my early blooming Saunders peonies that suffered bud blast, 2015 Saunders Peony Varieties Frozen Bud Blast. So here are the midseason peonies in my garden that suffered bud blast from the late winter cold we received last year. Since midseason peonies develop a little later than early season peonies, most of their buds were very small when they were blasted by the cold. So there was not a large bud that had turned brown as evidence of the bud blast. Instead these varieties usually bloom reliably, and they either didn't bloom at all or their blooms were severely reduced. Also I'm listing a few more early varieties that are not Saunders varieties (so they weren't on my previous list).

Early Peonies with Buds Blasted by Late Freeze
Peony Variety	2015 Bloom	2014 Bloom	Blast Rate	Bloom Reduction
Peony 'Early Scout' (Early)	0 of 3	7 of 7	100%	100%
Peony 'Roy Pehrson's Best Yellow' (Early)	3 of 15	10 of 12	80%	70%
Peony 'Coral Fay' (Early)	6 of 6	12 of 12	0%	50%

2015 Peony 'Coral Fay' Plant	2014 Peony 'Coral Fay' Plant

Midseason Peonies with Buds Blasted by Late Freeze
Peony Variety	2015 Bloom	2014 Bloom	Blast Rate	Bloom Reduction
Peony 'Red Charm'	0 of 4	5 of 5	100%	100%
Peony 'First Lady'	0 of 3	4 of 4	100%	100%
Peony 'Nymphe'	0 of 0	3 of 4	100%	100%
Peony 'Pink Princess'	1 of 4	7 of 7	75%	86%
Peony 'Pillow Talk'	2 of 4	11 of 12	50%	82%
Peony 'Kansas'	7 of 11	39 of 44	36%	82%
Peony 'Myra MacRae'	7 of 7	38 of 42	0%	82%
Peony 'Doris Cooper'	2 of 4	9 of 13	50%	78%
Peony 'Solange'	9 of 13	32 of 32	31%	72%
Peony 'Cherry Charm'	4 of 5	14 of 14	20%	71%
Peony 'My Love'	9 of 9	30 of 34	0%	70%
Peony 'Guidon'	14 of 17	44 of 63	18%	68%
Peony 'Lemon Chiffon'	1 of 4	3 of 3	75%	66%
Peony 'Many Happy Returns'	3 of 7	8 of 8	57%	63%
Peony 'Do Tell'	5 of 9	13 of 16	44%	62%
Peony 'Kelway's Glorious'	7 of 7	15 of 23	0%	53%
Peony 'America'	2 of 5	4 of 5	60%	50%
Peony 'Bowl of Cream'	5 of 8	8 of 10	38%	38%
Peony 'White Frost'	14 of 15	22 of 24	7%	36%
Peony 'Rose Heart'	4 of 7	6 of 6	43%	33%

2016 Peony Data Entry in Winter Time

I finally finished inputting the data I collected during the 2015 peony season last night. That ruler is to help me stay on the correct line. I think next year I need to go to two pages. The print is just getting way too small to keep everything on one page. Also my baby bear, Isabella, was keeping me company during this tedious work. Her smile made it a bit more manageable. I am looking forward to analyzing the data to see what it will reveal. I now have 10 years of bloom data. Now that I have 10 years' worth of data, it's time to put that 2015 Peony Bloom Data in Peony Database to good use! Look for some bloom data coming out sometime this year on my Bloom Dates page. :-)
The only problem I had with this year's data is that my Peony 'Red Charm' didn't bloom at all since its buds were blasted by our late winter storm, 2015 Early Peonies Suffered Frozen Bud Blast. So I don't have an offset date. After examining the last five years' worth of data, it looks like my Peony 'Grace Root' has bloomed within 1 day of Red Charm in 4 out of 5 years. So it sounds like Peony 'Grace Root's bloom date may be a suitable offset date for the 2015 data. Also Peony anemoneflora's bloom date was within 1 day of Red Charm in 3 out of 5 years and both Peony 'Grace Root' and Peony anemoneflora bloomed on the same date in 2015. So this will be my 2015 offset date, April 24th. I know the bloom date of Peony 'Red Charm' has been used as an offset date to calculate bloom times for peonies in the past. However, I'm not sure I'm convinced that it is a sounds scientific method. I may use bloom mean or median date, or some type of combination of these.

2016 Peony Photos on Main Page

Southern Peony now has 50 peony pictures in our Photos section! This month, for February, we are featuring the soft pink Peony 'Roselette' on our main page and have also added it to our peony Photos page. Each month we add a new peony photo to our main page and to our Photo archive. That way it steadily grows and gives you all something new to look at (and lust after). ;-) This archive can also be used as a reference for identifying your own peonies or finding new ones you'd like to grow. I started this project in 2012, adding watermarks and larger photos in 2013, wrote about it in 2014 Southern Peony Photos, and it has been growing steadily since. If there is particular peony in my Inventory list that you'd like me to add a photo of, please leave a comment and let me know or send me an email, and I will try to add it if I already have a good photo of it. If I don't already have a good photo of it, I will try to get one this spring! Happy (Peony) Gardening!

Peony 'Roselette'

2016 Species in APS Handbook of the Peony 1st Edition

It was nice to take a little time for myself this past weekend and catch up on a little reading. I purchased the Manual of the American Peony Society First Edition (aka APS Handbook of the Peony 1st Edition) almost three years ago now (before my son Maddox!). Yikes! Yes, it got put to the side even though I was almost finished. However, a hot bath with some peony soaking salts from K. Hall Design Peony Products and a little free time netted me a few more pages. I was able to finish the section on species peonies. Apparently there was much confusion and many more categories of species peonies back when this book was written in 1928. The author links many of the species classes together noting there are little difference between x and y categories. It seems this topic has been subject to many revisions over the years with each plant discoverer and Paeonia genus researcher using their own methods of peony species classifications. It will be nice when one day all of them have been DNA mapped and we are able to classify them conclusively!
Manual of the American Peony Society
Plate XXXIX. Officinalis rubra plena

2016 New Intersectional Peony 'Sugar Plum Fairy'

When I got an email from Hollingsworth Peonies this past weekend about their new peony cultivars, I was definitely curious. What a nice surprise to find out about a newly registered and currently available intersectional cultivar. The flower's name is Peony 'Sugar Plum Fairy'. The short bush and pale pink flower of this peony seem aptly named after a petite, cotton candy colored ballerina, The Sugar Plum Fairy from Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker. Tchaikovsky being one of my favorite composers and me being a little ballerina for almost 10 years is reason enough to buy it now, and so I did. I'm guessing this little dancer is even pretty than her picture. I've also added this newly offered Peony 'Sugar Plum Fairy' to my 2016 Intersectional Peony Catalog Price Comparison List!

Hollingsworth Peonies'
Intersectional Peony 'Sugar Plum Fairy'