It's about $30 for shipping and everything for me, 4 peonies. I think the same charge over in USA.

I just got to know that Fina Gardens were sold to another owners and they will continue the business. Hopefully everything will stay as good as before.

That's wonderful Anya! If you get any more details please pass them on!

Thanks Anya! I'm glad they were able to sell it and hopefully they will continue shipping the great peony roots.

Oh My Peonies opens for 2022 on 12/11.

Vals_Garden said:
That depends very much on the weather Laurie. We were lucky here to have had lots of rain the past Summer (it doesn't flood here and the soil is mostly open bottom with clay here and there) so if three or four flowers were open on each stem they were too heavy to self-support when they got soaked.

Thanks. Something I hadn't thought about before: side buds create more flowers that can really weigh down a stem if it rains. If there are no side buds, the stem is more likely to hold up the single bloom, even if full of rainwater.

And which would you rather have Laurie - a little support and weeks more of bloom with rain or no rain, or one bloom regardless of the weather? While a pretty face will get me every time I do prefer those with side buds In fact I have one cv that reliably has six or seven side buds but they pretty much open one at a time and so far I have not had to support it.

Re. earlier mention of how the Peony Shop in Holland produces so many roots, I was interested today when I viewed their selection for 2022 that they have a home page showing them planted out in thousands of rows, and a caption that says the SEEDLINGS come out of the greenhouses and are planted in the fields. As they come from seedlings it means they are tissue cultured and not propagated by division. For most gardeners that's OK but if one dabbles in hybridizing it won't work

I thought that too at first.
But if you look at the varieties that they sell as "seedlings"…….they are the varieties which do adventitious roots. Seedling is the wrong term for them to use. They should call them small roots.

I did go back and look at the seedlings Caroline but after checking all the 'A's' against the APS Registry only found Alesia was registered so I'm not sure why you think there are so many that strike adventitious roots as these seedlings appear to be mostly their own unregistered seedlings. I also noted that the Aquila they sell is their own (unregistered) and totally different from the gorgeous registered Aquila from Nate Bremer (which I grow) It also takes way too much time to propagate using cvs that strike adventitious roots and would require totally separate production areas Caroline. I'm still convinced they all come from test tubes

Seedlings mean new varieties that are obtained from seeds via hybridization. I asked them a few years ago, they confirmed that they sell roots from division. Roots I received from them were big and healthy, I read from other customers how happy they were to received huge roots from Peony Shop. you never get big roots after tissue culture propagation and hey look different. I guess they grow seedlings in greenhouses but I don't know. I myself grow seedlings only indoors to speed up the process.

I beg to differ Anya - why do you think tissue cultured plants don't grow big? And when they do they are divided like all vegatatively propagated plants, so the Peony Shop can legitimately say they sell root divisions. If they are doing their own hybridizing then certainly many will be unnamed seedlings, as shown, but most cvs are not sold as "seedlings" but 3-5 eye "divisions". Not sure why the word 'seedlings' is specific to the product and development of a fertile seed - I think the plant material that leaves the greenhouses came from a growing medium in a test tube. I'm not picking on The Peony Shop - I know this practice has been in use for decades by wholesalers of all kinds of plant material, after all it's the fastest way to mass propagate a particular plant. And for the most part they are indistinguishable from the parent plant (the original cultivar that provided the meristem material)

I don't know why Peony Shop would lie if they use tissue culture propagation, it is totally legal and companies don't hide this. Ans it is easy to check and big companies have plenty control of other organizations. I might not know something, would like to learn more. As far as I know culture tissue propagation is used for Itoh's peonies, not for herbaceous. Please give an example if you know more.

I don't believe anyone said Peony Shop lied or anyone said it was "illegal" and herbaceous peonies can be tc'd too. While itohs are done because they are so hard to divide in large quantities, herbaceous cvs are done for mass propagation.

Interesting conversation about tissue culture vs large root divisions. What is the disadvantage of a tissue cultured plant?

Vals_Garden said:And which would you rather have Laurie - a little support and weeks more of bloom with rain or no rain, or one bloom regardless of the weather? While a pretty face will get me every time I do prefer those with side buds In fact I have one cv that reliably has six or seven side buds but they pretty much open one at a time and so far I have not had to support it.

True! Longer flowering is nice. What is your self supporting 6-7 side buds peony??

The tissue plants that I have purchased usually take longer to produce flowers. Sometimes 3 years or more.

lauriemorningglory said:Interesting conversation about tissue culture vs large root divisions. What is the disadvantage of a tissue cultured plant?

I am not sure why the comparison would be between a t/c and a "large root division". I'm pretty sure that tissue cultured plants are usually sold the same size as a "root division". Clearly if that is not the case then one can expect a smaller t/c (which is the implication) to take more time to grow and flower.
Perhaps we can get funding to do a comparative study

Sorry - forgot the other question; the peony is Seven Sisters;

That's a beauty Valerie.