I spoke with an elderly gentleman today, who told me when herbaceous peonies finish blooming they can be cut to the ground.
The to sprinkle annual seed around them for the rest of the summer. And the peonies would be back again next year, no problems!
He said he would cut them to the ground for his mother back in the 30's and sprinkle saved snapdragon seeds.
Anyone every heard of this?
It would give me more room for flowers :)
There are lots of opinions and practices and who is to say they are all wrong. But, the conventional wisdom is do not cut the stems to the ground until they are brown and dormant. The plant needs the leaves to generate the nutrients required for next year's bloom cycle. You will have a much stronger plant by giving it a shot of balanced fertilizer with water and let the leaves do their thing.
I generally recommend cutting them down in the fall when they start to turn brown.
I agree that you should leave the foliage but that does not stop you from planting annuals around the peonies. Depending on the color tones of the foliage you can make some very striking combinations. By tones I am referring to the leaf color that on some plants, not only peonies, can look blue, green, wine, or yellowish from a distance.
You can also use big or small leafed annuals to match or contrast with your peonies. Some peonies develop rich browns, golds, and wine colors in the fall. By cutting off the foliage before freeze time you never get to see all of the beauty.
You could probably cut them half down, or a third, and then plant some annuals that get a little taller like zinnias, cosmos or larkspur.
I grow verbena bonarienses, nicotiana alta and cynoglossum around my peonies. The combination with the leaves is very pretty. I also have lily bulbs in my peony beds. It occurs to me that that the gentleman's mother's peonies may have been extremely mature, and therefore there was little to lose by cutting them completely down. But in general I agree with all of the advice above. The foliage can be quite beautiful, and it should be cut down in fall for the health of the plant.
Donna.
I have my peonies in an overcrowded cottage garden bed. I have dark heuchera in front of them which looks very nice. The peony foliage shades the heuchera. I have a rose behind the peonies, so I cheat and shape the peony foliage a bit to get more sun for the plants behind them.
I assumed that regular garden peonies, like bulbs, need their foliage for energy. I read that tree peonies should not be cut at all, is this correct? Do the leaves just drop in the winter? How deep do northern tree peony gardeners mulch their peonies?
Tree peonies should not be cut at all.The only thing I cut with tree peonies is in spring when there is obvious dead wood visible.
I have all of my peonies spread through out my roses,lilies and other perennials.Most of them are not mulched and they did fantastic this year.I just never got around mulching .
Contrary to most information you can trim tree peonies to direct their growth. According to Rick Rogers you select a bud which will be where the leaf touches the stem which is in the way you wish to direct the plant. You then cut right below the first leaf above that bud. What happens is that the stem will die back to the bud which will force it to grow. Sometimes depending on all kinds of things the whole stem will die but that is gardening.
I find that the upright growing tp's are better left alone but the relaxed and semi-relaxed can respond well to triming. If you have a large amount of growth above where you want to cut you may want to wait until August or September and use the extra growth to attempt a graft.
Hi there! I'm brand new to the site and to gardening as an all consuming passion :) I bought some peonies and the proprietor of the nursery said that they are all looking sad and dying at this time of year as they were going dormant. Is this true? I'm a zone 7a....if this helps.
Also, I am most likely doing everything wrong with my entire garden and the peonies I transplanted attempted to flower but the buds went black and died. Any ideas what that was all about? It was moved before it flowered early spring of this year. I moved other ones as well that were found when I removed a monster shrub that the PO had planted.
TIA!
Welcome to gardening !
I am in zone 5 a and my peonies do not go dormant that early.It seems like they shouldn't in your zone since it is warmer.Hopefully someone in your state or zone will chime in .What state are you from ?
I just bought 5 Peonies just a couple of days ago since they were on sale and they still look great,the same with my potted ones ( I am redoing some gardens )
Do You have some Superthrive ? that might help them along.Can you post a picture ?
Brigitte
Many peonies will abort, blast, their buds to provide more nutrients to the roots. After they are established they should be fine. I would wait until late August or September before I fed the plants. A plant that has been in a nursery and is becoming dormant with additional fertilizer can start new growth which could cause the plant not to have enough strength to live over the winter or if it lives the putting out foliage without root storage of enough nutrients for both root and foliage could cause the plant to die. Personally I prefer hard granular fertilizer over the liquid or round formed stuff. For me it incorporates more slowly into the root area and unlike the round balls do not leave a shell casing that never seems to decompose.
Most peonies are starting to feed their roots rather than the foliage. To do this they do like most plants and draw nutrients from the foliage. Other than in the Northern most zones of Alaska and Canada most have bloomed and the leaves are maturing. Once the leaves mature, can no longer grow larger, they will start sending nutrients to the roots. To some this will make the foliage appear ratty but to wierdo's like me I start seeing the subtle changes in the plants that start the changes from sugars to starches. Some peonies will have lovely fall coloration if left until freeze up. I like to watch the daily changes in the foliage from bright greens to yellows, some to bronzes and golds.
Tree peonies not the regular herbaceous, 'bush' type, are just now forming their buds for next year. On some they will have a larger than the other buds, bud. These buds are the ones that should form flowers and extra growth for next year. Some have small side buds on the stems which in earlier days were cut of before they unfolded, put in a covered container with moist sand and if the person was lucky in six to eight weeks the buds would show new roots forming. Again this this I have missed these and mine are already unfolding. But you should look at your plants just to see what nature does when we are not looking.
Alana,
you're right as always.I mentioned Super thrive due to shock ? never actually thinking further that it is a fertilizer as well.
I love the look of the seed pods, so I never cut my peonies back before fall. The pods are great for crafts and floral arrangements. Some people say you should remove the spent blooms to feed the roots, but once your plants are established that shouldn't be an issue.
One of the local peony growers used Super Thrive on some of his plants that were potted up for spring sale. I have received a report that they looked twice the size of his normal plants. I have been meaning to try some. The person that used the product told my informant that even though it is marketed with different strengths all are the same product? I don't know if it is true or not.
I was not even thinking of Super Thrive when I wrote what I did. It was a carry over from another conversation where a person expected the plants to become bigger as the summer progressed and insisted that foliar feeding was the only way to do it. Might work early but not at this time.
I only have a few peonies but, as ah says, once they bloom there is no further growth in the stems and leaves. The fernies are the same. My herbaceous peonies are a dark, lush green but they haven't grown an inch since blooming. I think the time to fertilize is in the very early spring just as the eyes break the surface.
I have fertilized with a time release formula I bought from a nursery and have sprinkled it around everything....lol!
We've had the whole drought/flooding thing here in NoVA. I am on clay with rocks and clumps of determined grass. I will post some pics when I get them. All the foliage on all of them has died off. I had a rhizome of one break in half but I planted it anyway.
I'm hoping I haven't done in all of these pretty plants. I have invested heavily in hostas which may make up for any blunders by overgrowing the blank places....lol!!
Received an e-mail from Harvey Buchite of Hidden Springs speaking of fertilizing peonies and he says July is the proper time for summer feeding to affect root growth in the fall. Also, cut off any seed pods above the first leaf on the stem. The implication is do not cut any more leaves off peonies than is necessary, dead or diseased leaves excepted.
Does that go for tree peonies too ?
Yes. I received the same email newsletter from Harvey and in it he mentioned that even your perennials would benefit. One of the other things he mentioned is to look for any plants that may benefit from being moved or the plant beside it removed to give the plants room to grow.
One thing that I have found of value with tree peonies is that if you leave a crown of leaf stems around the end buds the deer are less apt to eat them. Of course very young deer will taste anything. Starving deer will eat everything unless it is very poisonous.
