It's late in the season, but I couldn't resist placing an order. I came across the Heartland Peony Society website, as I was viewing pictures of peonies. They happen to list vendors for peonies, so I decided to place an order with Brooks Gardens, one of their recommended vendors, who was still shipping until the end of November. I was quite surprised that they shipped so late during the season. I placed an order for:
Itoh Pastel Splendor
Itoh Hillary
Cheddar Surprise
Goldilocks
Green Lotus
Lois' Choice
I'm really excited about these new plants. The bare roots that I received were large and healthy, and had at least 3-5 or more eyes. It's nice to find a new source for peonies.
Please share which peonies you ordered for the fall, your source, and the state of the bare roots when they arrived. Annette
Which peonies have you ordered for the fall of 2012?
I ordered a Mrs. FDR from Old House Gardens. For the bargain price of $17.50, I received a gorgeous root with 14 eyes. It was thrilling. I had a mature one at my former house and I remember it as a 7 eyed plant that established itself very quickly.
I also ordered two Burma Midnights from Peonies.Net (Bannister Garden Center). $22 peonies were on sale at half price. I received two beautiful roots, one with 14 eyes and the other with 9 eyes. Talk about another bargain. Thank you, Leawood Gardener (Gary) for this recommendation.
These were the first peonies I had ever ordered from these two companies. And I cannot remember ever paying less. And they were certainly the largest and healthiest roots I have ever received.
These two companies have now gone to the top of my personal list.
Based in DonnaMack's experience I also ordered from Peonies.net. I got
2 Red Grace @30/15. $30.00
2 Heidi. @20/10. $20.00
1Topeka Garnet @22/11
I made some selections on line, then called for advice when I couldn't narrow down my choices. The woman I spoke to was extremely knowledgable and helpful. I also was very impressed with the size of the roots I got, many more than 5 eyes on all.
Can't wait for spring!
Pam
I now have eye envy, LOL. You both also got some really good bargains. I'll have to keep those sources in mind next year. I can't wait to see everyones blooms next year. It's great to get a bare root with so many eyes. The most I've ever received was 7 eyes on roots received from Hollingsworth last fall, and those plants did well this past spring, with some of them blooming the first year. Annette
I did the best of all from OHG last year with Edulis Supurba and Humei. Too many eyes to count really. For this year, Bannister at peonies.net sent me Garden Trasure and Prairie Charm and Burma Midnight, about the same I would have expected anywhere, but for half the price. Two small whites and a festiva maxima from the Klehm sale.
RosemaryK, those are beautiful peonies, I looked up the pictures on the web. I have Edulis Superba, but I've never seen it bloom. It sounds like OHG is an excellent place to order peonies from, and I wonder if Bannisters will have any peonies left next year, since they're retiring. I got bare roots of Festiva Maxima from a local nursery here this year. I initially had it planted in the garden, however it was not in a spot that I liked, so I pulled it up and potted it. I've also still got some tree peonies from a co-op earlier this year that are still in pots, and Raspberry Sundae and Pink Parfait in pots as well, the latter 2 were bought as plants in 2 gallon pots this year.
Does anyone have experience with keeping peonies in pots over the winter outside?
Cem, do bear in mind that my climate is much colder than yours, but two years ago, in anticipation of moving, I put all of my peonies in pots in April and then put some of them in my garage for the winter. Several of them remained in pots over the winter. Most of them bloomed although in some cases they had lost a portion of their root systems.
As long as you have the entire root system in soil and there is enough room, peonies do not seem to know that they are not in the ground. I would think that the only issue for you would be cooling hours because you are further south.
Oh, and Bannisters' owners are not in fact retiring. Gary sent out a correction. So they will in fact be around in the future.
This message was edited Dec 9, 2012 10:36 AM
I am just starting to grow peonies this year. I bought 8 herbaceous peonies and a Bartzella itoh from Solaris Farms. The roots were pretty good with 3-5 eyes and decent size tubers. However, the Itoh Bartzella was enormous with 7 eyes and three times the size of the herbaceous. I also got some Saunders peonies from Frost Hill Farm and the roots they sent were also very fresh and good size. When I saw the sale at Bannister Gardens, I bought some more Saunders peonies. I was really surprised by the nice size and # of eyes of the peonies from Bannister Gardens. They were really awesome. Just yesterday, I placed an order for 20 more hybrid peonies from an Ebay seller who is a peonies hybridizer. These are his 5 years seedlings whose flowers are supposedly unique from other peonies. Hopefully, there are some pretty flowers in these 20 plants. Guess I was pretty badly bitten by the peonies bug. :)
Who is the Ebay seller. A word of plant speak, most seedlings can be sold as unique from other plants of the same type. Now if the seller was Leon they would be unique.
I do not know his name, but this is his ebay name, billstep4545. According to his ebay information, he is based in Wisconsin. 20 seedlings for $32 + $12 shipping is the offer.
Donna, thanks for the info about growing in pots, and the info that Bannisters will still be around next year. I'll have to give them a try next fall. The temperature does get cold enough here to give the peonies their chill time. We've already had a lot of cold days and frosts this fall.
Welcome kousa2012, it sounds like you're going to have great peonies for your garden, that will give you many great years of blooms.
This afternoon was spent finding the peonies in the garden that had been buried under the fall leaves, and pine straw that was recently used to mulch the yard. It was amazing to show deep some of them had gotten. I was unable to find only one peony, Carol, and I wonder if it rotted, or it's buried itself deeper from the ground settling. Annette
Here are some pics from last June of what i think was the Edulus Superba peony. It is hard for me to tell it apart from Humei. In the second pic it is over half way back in the landscape, with Ms. Jules Elie being the big pink one toward the front.
Those are gorgeous blooms Rosemary. I have Edulis Superba which was planted in 2010, but I've never seen it bloom. I hope to see some blooms next year.
I've been on a mission the last few weekend to get the peonies uncovered from the fall leaves, and the pine straw mulch that was recently put down. I've also been adding better labels to them, so that when they bloom, it will be easier to identify them. The peony pips are starting to increase in size, despite the cold weather that we've been having intermittently. We've recently been getting more rain and intermittently warm days which I feel is contributing to this. Here's a pic of one of the peonies with large pips.
Today. due the nice weather, I was able to plant Lois's Choice, Goldilocks, Cheddar Surprise, and tree peony Kaoukamon. We're supposed to get more rain starting tomorrow, and colder weather again this week.
Those sound great, Cem.
I still have room for another TP and am thinking about trying a rockii again if it isn't too expensive. My tiny one was too attractive to my pooch who seemed to like nibbling on the root, which meant I was replanting it all year.
I have Cheddar Cheese from the same cheddar series, and hope it reaches more potential next year. It was hard work cleaning up the peony beds at my house, too, but I let the rake take whatever it wanted of the marker labels. I do have a diagram of where I plant everything, but the problem with that is when something doesn't come up, it's harder to identify a neighbor.
I have started mapping where the plants are in my garden as well, and this helped me find to general location of the peonies that had been covered. Walter Faxon was one of those, which had been planted close to Edulis Superba (ES), and Lilian Wild, with Madame de Verneille close by. I finally found it yesterday. It's been really helpful doing this.
Over the years I've also started keeping the invoices of plants that I've ordered. Last night when I was looking for the invoice for ES, I realized that I also had peony Kelway's Glorious, and had forgotten that I had ordered the plant. It has been labelled as a noid peony for years, as was Sorbet, now I can label it with the proper tag.
In the past, I bought plants, put them in the ground, without labelling them properly, and I now realize what a huge mistake that was. The orginal plant tags some times will disintergrate or get taken off by some critter. Live and learn. Annette
I finally planted the peonies from Brooks Garden this past weekend, and we had rain for 2 days after which gave them a good soaking, with more rain and colder weather coming tomorrow I'm going to mulch them once the ground freezes to protect them their first winter.
Sleep well, peonies!
I wish they would go to sleep. The newly planted peonies have pips that increased in size already this week, it must have been caused by all the rain that we got.
Happy Holidays everyone. Annette
Ha! Annette. Ditto. I know where ALL of my peonies are, including every single one of my new or newly transplanted ones, because they are popping up and saying hi there! And it's cold! 17 degrees at night.
This has happened before, but it's very weird. The good part is that none of them are in areas that are going to expose them to damage, and I now know EXACTLY where my Burma Midnights, Mrs. FDR, and my transplanted Festiva Maxima are.
Happly Holidays to everyone. I am looking forward to everyone's flowers in spring.
Donna
That's funny, because last year I had that experience, but this year I can only see pips on the herbacious ones if I look closely and dig a bit. They are also protected by salt hay mulch to protect from frost heaves. Of course the ITOHs are supposed to have them well above ground, and do.
Best of the season from the Northeast, too!