I suppose that I am 'farming' peonies, but without the benefit any hand-me-down knowledge or actual farm implements (or even power tools). So smaller scale and more hands on. I mean, I walk out and weed / fertilize each peony by hand and check on the health of each as I go.
I am not going to dig and divide a peony until I am satisfied that it is the correct variety and that means that it needs to bloom. Multiplying a mistake isn't going to happen if I can prevent it. That said, ground planted first year plants don't bloom well anyhow (this is true for both smaller and larger divisions) - I don't see much of a point of allowing them to expend the energy in what seems like an iffy result.
And by don't bloom well, I mean that they have difficulty opening, blooms with irregular shapes, smallish flowers, semi-double when they should be double, etc. The resulting flowers aren't necessarily very good at all for identification of the plants beyond the sigh of relief that I at least have the correct color. So if I've got 8-10+ peonies of a given type planted, I might allow the best of them to grow a bud just to see if the coloration matches - the rest of it will have to wait until the second year or maybe even the third year.
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