I try to trim all the side buds from my peonies, leaving just the main bud on each stem. Larger blossoms and the plants apparently like it. Sometimes, I trim all the buds of a first year peony in order to give it a boost in storing nutrients for the next year.

After this year's peony bloom season, I am in total agreement with Jerry about disbudding. THe double peonies that had their sidebuds trimmed bloomed better, bigger, nicer, and lasted longer from my observations this year. I will definitely try to do this again next year.

As far as storing peonies for later bloom, the peonies don't look as fresh but not too bad after about 3.5 weeks of storage in my fridge. I store them in a bucket filled with 2 inches of water.

Here they were on 5/28/16. Not all of these flowers were picked that day but most were picked that week. THese are mostly doubles.




Here they are today, 6/22/16

Karen, that looks like success! I'm intrigued by this. As a wedding floral designer I get tons of requests for peonies, and they're expensive and quality is iffy, even when they're in season. Did your blooms continue to open well?

Hi Neal! After reading your post just now, I took some out to see how they open. I will take pics when they are fully open tomorrow and post them tomorrow. They look pretty good for being in storage for a month. Some near the door are starting to open. I don't have a proper fridge for storage. Considering that this is a home fridge, they are holding up very well.

This is my first experience taking cuttings for storage so there are mistakes and lessons to be learned. The two factors that affect proper opening are cutting the blooms at the right time and the second is storage temperature.


Some of the cuttings I took too early, the buds being too hard, the flowers wouldn't open. That is shown by the tight pink ball of Sarah Barnhardt near the hosta. The red peony near the hosta is wilting and not looking fresh because this one was cut a bit late. Storing it near the fridge door also hastened its wilt. Henry Bockstoce is not opening properly either because I cut it still at a too hard stage eventhough the petals were starting to open. The best ones are those cut at the right time as shown by the white and the pink single. Those are opening properly and looking very good.

I finally added the new purchases to arrive this fall into my database. I am in BIG trouble. 22 coming and have no idea where to put them. May have to resort to digging up more lawn. I dug up a rhubarb bed and moved three peonies there that were not happy where they were. Two were partially rotted so hoping this will save them. The other had barely changed since planting over 5 years ago. Very few feeder roots but a firm tuber. Strange. Not enough sun I think.

This fall I will dig up a lot of stuff that is iffy and are sort of 'one off's' in the beds to allow for a more 'specimen' look with heavy mulch between. I despise the chickweed that invades every year. I even preened this year again. Can't imagine what it would look like if I hadn't done it.

Karen, even the professionals apparently get the timing wrong when cutting for storage- often those I receive from wholesalers look to have been cut too young and never open. At $6 each (minimum, wholesale), that's a lot for a little green ball

Just getting four this fall,
so I hope to get holes dug and ready for them before they get here.
Reading some of what Netherlands growers do, and they "chalk" the peonies?
I assume this means adding limestone, or some form of Calcium carbonate to the soil.
I am thinking that I might buy ordinary white chalk, and bang a piece in beside each peony.
It would be like those fertilizer spikes.

So I tried ordinary chalk on some peonies----but chalk is expensive compared to Dolmitic Limestone so going withe that for the rest. It has the added benefit of Magnesium too.

Interesting idea Caroline. I am getting 13 from the Peony Shop in Holland. Joshua is a great fellow and has been very kind and generous to deal with. I have another 9 coming from Hidden Springs and Adleman's. Some species and some rare hard to find heritage ones. I just hope I can make the massive change over in my garden design this fall to accommodate them all. A few will go to the botanical garden. At least one really needs to be in the rock garden since it requires rather sharper draining soil but they just don't want a peony, no matter how small and diminutive in a rock garden. Pooh. They have some small aquilegia that are very similar in the tufa beds. It would look lovely. It is a single fern leaf, tiny little fellow.

I think Botanical gardens try to keep plants in what is considered their natural sites.
I plant peonies in the rock garden for good drainage, but Botanical Gardens can't do that just because it would look nice. They are displaying the plants in the Botanically correct environments.

I guess. It would look a little like a cuckoo amongst all the alpines and such. Although as I said, there is a tiny little bleeding heart that is considered a rock garden plant. Adorable, lots of flowers and all of 12" tall to the tops of the flowers. Like the larger fernie bleeding heart, just smaller.

I will need to look for that alpine bleeding heart-it sounds cute!

We had to leave our peonies behind when we moved in the middle of the summer because we we're afraid we would kill them and wanted to wait till the fall. My Aunt gave them to me many many years ago and I've never done anything special to them. They always bloom so I figured they were OK but now I have to move them and I'm totally ignorant on transplanting, splitting, storing bulbs so any advice would be greatly appreciated as to when I should try moving these. The pics here are gorgeous by the way.

There are many very experienced peony growers here. One can look over the previous posts and threads and learn all one needs to know about peonies.

It's going to be a big job if they've been in place for many years--the roots get very large! You're doing it at the right time of year, anyway. Start by cleaning your digging/cutting implements, don't want to spread anything from other plants. I think it's easiest to start digging right around the outer edge of foliage, you'll probably have some feeder roots down pretty deep that far out. You'll just dig down around the whole thing, I'd start out at around 18" deep and use the shovel to wiggle the root ball once you've completed the circle. If it doesn't move easily you'll need to go deeper. Once you've established that digging ring you'll probably want to cut back the foliage to make it easier to handle. Once the root moves fairly easily you should be able to use the shovel to tip the whole plant and lift it out by reaching underneath and just manhandling it onto a flat surface. If it breaks while you're lifting it out don't panic, the roots are fairly brittle in the ground. I'm told they get a bit more flexible if you leave them sitting in the shade for a while, I've never been patient enough to try that....Use the garden hose to clean off the remaining dirt, you can normally see how the eyes are attached to the feeder roots then. You'll probably have to make a few cuts but most of the pieces should fairly much pry apart. Try to leave around 3-5 eyes attached to at least 1 or 2 good feeder roots/division. I've never stored peony roots for more than a few days, if you're doing more than that you'd probably want to put them in a pot or at least store them so they're not too wet yet don't completely dry out, either. There are several videos out there that give good demos, watch a few if you're not confident but normal herbaceous peony roots are pretty forgiving. Good luck!

Somebody said they use a digging and water jet combination to get the roots out with minimal damage. Sounds messy but maybe a little shot of water would help soften the dirt and kind of give an idea of the size of the root ball. I really want to move two of mine but one is really expensive (Lemon Chiffon) and the other is Border Charm. BC is simply too big for where it is located and I want to totally redo that bed.

Thank you so much for taking the time to give me the confidence to try this. I certainly don't mean to be a bother and have tried looking over other posts but being new it can be very overwhelming. I love the water jet idea. We have so many plants to move that we had to leave that I want to have a plan and know what I need before we start. I will definitely check out some videos too. Thanks again

Just be careful how much water you put on them before getting them out of the ground--you can create a muddy mess that way that can impede getting them out of the ground. The member who suggested using the hose on jet is doing it in raised gardens with a lot of sand so has really good drainage. Not saying not to do it--more visibility into the roots you're digging is a good thing, just don't make your job harder than it has to be. The only thing hard about digging/dividing/moving peonies is the sheer size of the root ball when it's been in the ground for any length of time, don't be intimidated!

Oh I agree, Liz. I had wondered if I would end up with a huge puddle with the root submerged down there somewhere in an ever increasing mud bed. Your point is well taken about the nature of the beds the person who suggested this has.

I attended Harvest Day in our botanical garden; representing our peony collection. 85mph winds up in the hills, not so much where we were sitting under tent in the rain. lol. Oh, the things we do for our plants and causes. But I did make contact with a lady who sort of refurbishes beds. I wouldn't want her to replant for me, but at least she knows a daisy from a weed and can dig out the beds, leaving the larger 'specimen' plants in good shape. May solve part of my problem this fall. It is the digging out that has me so defeated. Presented with a more or less clean bed, I can take it from there.

That's great Mary! Hopefully she can get the digging out part of the work done. Don't know about you but for me it's really hard to make the call of "this one's outta here!", having someone else who can make that judgment might be just the thing you need to get reenergized!