Peonies are so hardy, and durable. and long-lived that they usually get along with no attention at all.
Reasons for Not Blooming Well
But you can help yours have better flowers. If they aren’t blooming well, check this list of possible reasons:
• Not enough sun (they like it all day)
• Newly transplanted (need year to recover)
• Too deep (put crown only inch below the soil)
• Competition (beware of roots of trees and shrubs)
• Hungry (provide food and water if needed)
• Disease (prevent with fungicide sprays) Best time to plant:. Early spring or fall.
Feed them well. Peonies are heavy eaters and appreciate applications of complete fertilizer. Apply it early in spring, in a ring around plant.
Feeding Time
Work it into soil, and water thoroughly. A second feeding, after blooming, helps strengthen plant.
Don’t cut off leaves until autumn, for they produce food for next year’s crop of flowers. Hold ’em up! Stake to prevent heavy flowers from falling to ground and getting dirty.
Dowel sticks with screw eyes in head through which heavy wire is run make inexpensive supports.
Remove after bloom time. This is so center of plant has a chance to get plenty of air and sunshine. Chances of disease arc lessened if leaves aren’t crowded.
Commonest Peony
Trouble-control. Ants can spread disease. Control by dusting or spraying plant and ground with chlordane.
Commonest peony ailment is botrytis blight which makes leaf spots and withers buds. Prevent by spraying with fungicide such as captan, zineb, phygon, ferbam.
Apply first as shoots emerge from soil in spring; repeat twice at ten-day intervals. Bigger flowers.
For show-quality blooms, let only the large end bud on each branch develop; remove all side buds when they first appear.
Disease Prevention
If you’re after lots of flowers and are not fussy about size, leave all buds on; they’ll keep opening over a long period. When flowers fade, cut them off just below the heads.
Fall cleanup. Prevent disease from wintering over on old tops by cutting stems of regular peonies (not tree peonies) off at the ground.
Better yet, cut them an inch below ground. Do it in the fall, just before leaves drop. Burn these tops.
Then, if you had some signs of blight this year, soak the area around the plant’s crown with a fungicide.
44659 by Rose Ross