Today was a gorgeous day, we finally had a break from the arctic blast that's had us in its grip for the past week.

I was able to plant my 2 yellow tree peonies, 1 pink tree peony, and,Itoh Yumi. I've still got the box of GH Wild peonies to plant, hopefully, I'll get those done next week. The pips on these are increasing in size, and remain healthy in appearance.

Hope everyone is faring better than I am, and have gotten the fall peonies planted.

The last of my peonies were planted today. It was a gorgeous day with temps in the high 60's. I actually had to pause from planting, because I got too hot, LOL.

The plants had been kept in the box from GH Wild. Some of them actually started growing, despite being in the plastic bags, one even putting on feeder roots.

Here are the plants before they were planted.

Pink Princess


Myrtle Tischler


Miss Melburne


Avalanche


I'm sure the new growth will be zapped when we get colder weather, it's nice that these tubers came with plenty of pips, so the plants should be fine next spring. I'm glad to have completed planted my peonies for this year.

I really drool over those plants. Really hardy guys. You have 60F and we have 25F and snow. That's okay. I was missing the snow now that it is December. My entire life I have had snow at Christmas.

I got those from GW this year, too, Annette! Really excited to see what's going to bloom next spring!

That's so true Mary, they are very hardy, and weren't phased by the weeks they spent in the box.

We'll be warm over the next 10 days, with no temps below freezing, so they'll have some time to form feeder roots.

I'm glad you'll have your snow for Christmas. Hopefully we won't get any, or other really cold weather due to the polar vortex. It's been brutally cold for our area the past few weeks, I'm glad we're in a warming trend. I've still got bulbs to plant.

We crossed posts Liz. I'm looking forward to next spring as well. My new peony bed has now been fully planted. Spring should be colorful next year.

I went to Lowe's today and had to laugh at a crate full of daffodil bulbs. We have inches of snow on the ground and under that frozen earth to at least 4 " . You can sure tell they don't pay attention to where they send this stuff.

I would call this an opportunity to do some potted bulbs for forcing, and getting some early blooms in the house😁

I guess I need to google how to do that. I actually have a bucket of bulbs that I dug up and didn't get planted in the garage. I just covered them with dirt and hoped they would last the winter. Guess I could extricate a few of those although they are pretty small.

Mary, here's a great article about forcing bulbs from jmorth, and there's a recent thread on the Bulb Forum about it as well.

It's a nice treat to have some early blooms indoors, well before the spring bulbs start blooming outside.

http://garden.org/ideas/view/j...

Wonderful. I printed it off and will see what I can do. I have no idea what kind of daffy's I have, but may just go buy some to experiment with. Thanks for the tip.

You're ! Have fun trying this.

Got an email yesterday that the 2015 Hidden Springs catalog is ready! Crazy early, huh? Went to their website and the one peony I was really interested in was sold out already, oops. Kinda early to make a peony order for next fall, anyway....

Yep, way too soon to think about peony orders for next year. I just finished planting the last my new ones this week. I'll have too see if I have room next year. My garden beds are getting pretty full.

Checked on the newly planted peonies today. We had a nice bit of rain over the last 2 days, which I'm thankful for.

The plants that were putting out stems while still in the box are growing. Those stems so going to die once the cold weather comes back. Here are a few pics.

Seems odd, but plants often display odd behaviors after being dug, packed, shipped, etc. I suppose it could set them back a bit, but Peonies take a couple of years to start showing off anyway, so I don't believe it will amount to significant damage. When I've moved Peonies, no matter how much or how little division I do, and no matter how quickly I get them replanted (I typically replant immediately), they always sulk for a year. I may see some blooms, but a lot of blind stalks too. I'm sure it depends somewhat on the specific variety too, some are certainly more vigorous than others.

I may experiment, and try covering the growing stems on the really cold days to see if I can preserve them. The stems coming up on Miss Melburne and Myrtle Tischler seem to have buds.

When I 1st started growing peonies, I noticed it took 3-4 years before I got blooms from newly planted tubers, but I didn't know what the heck I was doing back then at the time of planting.

Now that I know better, and add amendments to the planting hole, I've had several plants bloom the following spring, after begin planted in the fall. Several of my plants from Fina and Adelman's have bloomed the 1st year.

Those little pips are so cute! Can't wait for spring to come. Growing peonies in the south is so interesting. From your own experience, Annette, which peonies perform best for you so far?

Hi kousa, I agree, those pips are cute, but I don't expect them to survive, we've got a long way to get through winter.

I'm happy to say that all peonies do well here, when planted properly. I've been successful growing the herbaceous and Itoh peonies, and I've successfully grown tree peony "Shimanishiki" that's bloomed for me several times.

I also have tree peony "Black Dragon Hold Splendid Flower" and "Koukamon" that are growing, but they haven't bloomed yet. I planted 2 yellow and 1 pink noid tree peonies several weeks ago, that I hope that they do well.

I have several tree peonies that came from a co-op that didn't survive, most likely due to my ineptness. I started them in pots, 2 of them died before they were ever put in the garden. Of the 3 that made it into the garden only 1, Koukaman, survived.

I saw no growth from 1, and the other sent up a stem from the graft, but the tree never grew

I believe it's zone 8 where Peonies get iffy, but there are quite a lot of varieties known to perform well in gardens further south. Plants that actually like the cold make it easier for me to deal with winter, LOL.

I noticed that 'Pink Kisses', planted in early November, has pink growth buds at the soil surface now. Also saw red bud tips showing on 'Flame', planted last year. It's been pretty cold, so I think they'll stop there.

Annette, you mentioned getting a stem from the graft of that tree peony, was it grafted onto herbaceous peony rootstock? I had a tree peony at my last garden for several years, and suddenly one year a single pink herbaceous peony emerged right next to it, and bloomed! It freaked me out at first, I had no idea they were grafted. Did you see the pics of FrankRichards new plants? Those tree peonies looked to be growing on their own roots.