When one buys the tubers then usually the seller says it has so many eyes.
One Canadian supplier is advertising 1 year Itoh plants.
Earlier I purchased plants in half gallon containers at end of season sales.
How do I know whether these are same value or not?
size of plants and comparison shopping
You are comparing apples to oranges, as the saying goes. Herbaceous are normally sold with a mention of the number of eyes. However the intersectional Itoh's are rarely sold with the number of eyes mentioned. The one year old is a cloned plant.
Both can be very expensive or fairly cheap. Mostly you have to compare to other suppliers selling the same or similar plants of the ones you have.
Thanks for the clarification.
I guess what I want to know is a one year old Itoh, the same as those sold in half gallon containers?
I'll probably pass on the 1 year old plants because they are by mail order.
If I go local, then I can see exactly what they are selling, and for what price.
I was hoping that someone from an actual nursery would answer because I am uncertain about some of the terminology.
Both plants are probably the same size. Many nurseries, even those that grow some of their plants rely on the wholesale trade for their plants. They order by size required and then put the plants in containers the size their clients purchase most often. This is the same from petunias to trees. There are several trade sizes. Some of the names are liners, tubes, etc. but most are two inches or smaller.
The advantage of purchasing locally is that you can see the foliage and be able to tell if the plant appears healthy to you.
Visiting a lot of nurseries in your area will give you an appreciation of how hard some nurseries work to give you value and how some are no better than the box stores in handling their summer inventory. As an example we have several in this area that purchase seeds for rarer plants. They plant the seeds, depending on type either in a flat tray and carefully transplant to larger containers to grow before selling. Others just order a certain size and if you are lucky plop it into a bigger container to sell the same day. Because I am older than dirt I find by visiting nurseries you get to know by looking at the tags or labels on containers which wholesaler each nursery uses for which plants. Not all wholesalers are the same and no nursery can afford to grow everything they have for sale. Most of the ones that advertise they grow their own plants the growth is done when the start is placed in the pot. I apologize to all the nursery people here that this offends as it is a generalization of what happens most of the nurseries I visit.
Yes, visiting several nurseries is a good plan.
One thing bothers me about some sellers: they leave the gauze on the plug when they put it into the pot.
This does restrict plant growth,
and I no longer buy plants where they do not remove the plugs' gauze when potting on.
The plugs were started in those "Jiffy" things which is fine, but when they are potted on the gauze needs to be removed.
Caroline the plants that are sold at the nurseries here in the spring whether herbacious or ITOH are tissue culture. Lindsay D'Aoust told me ( when I bought an ITOH at the August sale and was unsure what to do with it) that there is a company in Mtl. producing them and that they are good and clean plants. Obviously they do have eyes but since they are already sprouted they need to be planted at the same depth as in the pot. Unlikely that anybody is selling peonies started from seed as it takes about 3 years to produce even a very small plant. I think your best bet is to buy herbacious from growers who ship bare root in the fall - several good ones in Canada-and lots of choice - and get the ITOHs when the nurseries here start selling them of also in the fall- if you watch you can get them for 20-30 instead of 80-90!
Here, depending on the nursery you have several choices on peonies. Most other than Itohs are not tissue culture.
Two at least keep roots in cold storage and can provide bare root plants for spring planting. Those need to go in immediately.
Several pot up roots in the fall and keep in their hoop houses or mulched bedding area. These should be sunk in the ground in pot until fall or planted immediately. Depending on the amount of foliage and any bloom size buds you can allow to bloom then plant. If planted immediately the bloom will abort. People want these for the cemeteries where the only visit at this time of the year. The roots are planted for the size of the pot and may be very deep in the pot or shallow. Best if you remove from pot, rinse with water and remove or trim any crossing or circular roots then plant.
The Itohs are purchased by the nurseries bare root and placed in pots to sell. These you can plant by un-potting and planting without checking root growth. Although the roots all look small in three years you will not know the difference. You can purchase divisions of Itohs but normally not in Spring.
The box stores sell in plastic bags roots that have been some where and should either be potted or planted directly. Here these are not tissue culture and can be from 1 to several eyes. Try to buy by look and weight of package.
The cheap tree peonies should start showing up at the box stores, esp HD and Lowes in January. Look for them in tall square boxes normally stuck in a corner. If you plant with only several inches of stem showing above the ground they should put out their own roots. A trick I found is to once you get them home look for a small white label either around the plant or in the planting medium. This will tell you the cultivar name. Most I have purchased this way have been true to name. Dragon in in pool of black ink does not like my soil but I keep trying to get it to grow.
This is a pic of a tiny tree peony which ah3815 had sent to me this past summer along with some tenuifolia seeds. If you look carefully at the center of the pic, you can see a tiny red bud indicating new growth. It is actually about the size of the point of a lead pencil. I moved it inside out of the garage and put it under a grow light. Crossing my fingers.
The seeds are planted in a group of 3" x 8" thin wall pvc pipe covered top and bottom with porus landscape cloth in order to keep out grubs and critters. It also protects the seeds from being floated up out of the soil by beating rain. They are out in the cold and snow in order to duplicate what they would find in nature. I planted one seed in each tube so they could develop roots without being torn apart when they are transplanting size. Crossing fingers again.
Pic of the landscape cloth. It is about the same texture as if you had crushed one of those fiber style furnace filters.
Wow, from the size of the bud it looks more like a two year old.
Very glad it germinated for you. Now hopefully the teni's will start sprouting. I can not remember if they send up a leaf the first year or not. I think my mind is going. Perhaps someone here will know.
For those just starting seeds some types will form below the surface but will not emerge as a true leaf until the second season.
Thank you for all the good info on growing peonies.
I do appreciate your ideas.
ah3815 - what is tissue culture? I have been reading up on (and doing) propagating dahlias and wondered this winter if I could do so with peonies. I take little cuttings of dahlias, dip in hormone, put in a little greenhouse type thing (two clear water cups), and in two weeks for so I have roots and we are off and running. What I read said that the best way to get more herbaceous was still to divide the tubers, and trees need to be spliced into herbaceous roots to grow and then develop their own roots. I would only want to try it out of curiosity. I don't have room to be growing multiples of plants.
Tissue culture is taking cells or other small pieces of anything and growing in a culture until the tissue multiplies enough to either form a tissue or in some plants develop a new plant. Same thing you are doing with your dahlias. Has been used for some time for growing tissues such as skin for transplants but has morphed over to plants Planteck in Canada supplies many of the intersectional peonies that places sell for around $30. Most of those only have one eye and root and look very small but will grow well and be equal to a field grown plant in a number of years.
Website cut and paste http://planteck.com/en/
Some older books suggest taking the buds that emerge from tp stems and placing them in a covered moist sand for the buds to develop roots. You would keep them in very dark shade, I think. Like many of the older books they 'assume' that everyone knows how to do this so no additional information. Another reason to talk about what works for you.
Some thing I have thought about doing is cutting pieces of the crown of peonies and trying to see if the piece would develop roots in a couple of years. You probably would need to dry the wet cuts then dip in hormones before putting in some type??? of growing medium. A use for those small bits that are tossed when dividing.
I knew it could be done for animal type organisms; didn't think about it being done with plants. I think I read somewhere that every cell in our bodies have all the bits and pieces (chromosomes) that make up what we are. but is doesn't seem like you could grow a person from a piece of toe for example. So do you think that the crown of peonies have all the 'pieces' that would be needed to grow (clone) a peony. Interesting idea. Really interesting. Might be something to think about come fall.
I think for tissue culture---you need sterile conditions.
But taking cuttings might work.