Peonies: Peonies in central NC?, 5 by DonnaMack

DonnaMack wrote:
Yep, it is mertonensis. I stopped buying them because you get them as first year plants and you have to overwinter them, which I don\'t find successful. But if I grow them from seed and put the basal foliage in the ground I tend to get 75 to 80% of the plants. I do think plants you grow from seed tend to be stronger (and a heck of a lot cheaper!!!)

Yes, that is heuchera \'Firefly\'. Over the years I kept buying heucheras for increasingly large amounts of money and they all died. I personally like ones with red flowers. I went to JL Hudson\' website (Watchdog 30 company) a good ten years ago and found this:

—Heuchera sanguinea Firefly. (100) HEU-20F. Packet: $2.50
1/4 gram: $7.50
Click for photos » HeucheraFirefly.jpg (108180 bytes) Heuchera sanguinea Firefly.jpg (113134 bytes)
\'CORAL BELLS\'. Dark scarlet, nodding, bell-shaped 1/2\" flowers in open clusters, on delicate stems to 2 feet, May to July. Hardy perennial with rosettes of roundish scalloped leaves. SW U.S. Zone 3. This is an improved deep scarlet strain. Germinates in 2 - 3 weeks.

It\'s still there.

Years ago! It\'s a surface seeder. I got a bumper crop of about seven, which I put next to alchemilla mollis and under a cornus alternafolia (in full western sun!) along with a peony.

Better yet, when I moved, I dug some up and put them in pots. Tough guys. This bedraggled specimen in the third picture became the plant in the fourth picture within weeks.

And if they heave or decline you can take incredibly weakened one, tear off the dead part, stick the rest in the ground in compost and they start growing again.

The last picture shows the seedlings.

I probably have ten. And just for the record, JLH has some amazing seed, and unlike a lot of other catalogs they are frank about how difficult things are to grow. But many seeds are in fact surface germinaters at about 70 degrees. I have grown hundreds of plants, and when you are growing perennials, you can save a ton of money and have as many as you want! And often of plants you can\'t buy for reasonable amounts of money anywhere.