Peonies: Peonies 2012, 1 by cathy166

cathy166 wrote:
Cem, that is lovely. Don't be surprised if you get flowers that are all red, red and pink or all pink with the Shima Nishiki. As the plants get bigger, the blooms also get larger. They also tend to close up at night and reopen in the morning sun.

I see from your earlier post that you just purchased some new bare roots. I don't know how they'll perform for you, but when I planted them in the spring, they did nothing that year. The following year they grew but without blooms. In the third spring they had a few buds, many of which dried up without opening. By the fourth spring (3 years later) they started looking like peonies, and now the are going great guns. Some of the peonies just grew but never bloomed, so last year I dug them up (they had bid roots) and planted them elsewhere and probably not so deep, and they are very happy.

I just planted an intersectional which looks great, but I have lost 2 tree peonies that never really "took."

In your zone you probably have perfect winter temps to make blooms but not bloom too late. Here peonies are referred to as the Memorial Day flower (another reference to the cemetery).

All of these came from Costco about 4-5 years ago.

This message was edited Mar 20, 2012 12:55 PM