Well you are asking a lot from dessicated bare roots too long dug and planted in the heat of summer in a lawn area. Bare roots depend on the stored energy stored in them during the growing season. The longer the bare roots are stored the less energy will be left. A better choice starting with weak roots would have been to pot them up and keep them in a shady area this summer to allow them to strengthen for a fall planting. At this time they are so weak they would not tolerate doing them over, so other than applying some shade, your plants are on their own to live or die, and I am afraid it will be the latter. Al

Al, so sad to read your message... but thank you for answering!

I am new to gardening ( started this year) and everybody jokes about my brown patch in the middle of the grass.... Well, Ill keep tending it, if there's nothing else to do, and if nothing comes up next spring, I'll just cheat and buy some ready-born plants next year... Right now everybody makes fun of me, when I knee down and stare to see if they grow... weeping at the peony grave... :)

Adiro, you might want to join the Canadian Peony Society or at least go to their website for information on growing peonies.

This is the real time to purchase peonies. Peony roots are sold dormant at this time of the year. Growers are starting to dig. The dormant root will send out little feeder roots during the winter which will provide the food to provide good foliage next year. You might have a flower or two but mostly foliage. If you purchase the (ready-born)?,I think you mean growing with foliage in a pot, the plant may not have enough food for growth during the summer and must wait until the cooler winter soil. Some of the feeder roots remain just feeder roots but some should develop eyes.

Mano Caprano sp and Lindsay D'Aoust have separate nurseries in Canada and their websites are a joy to read.

Just a FYI. I have a tree peony whose top was eaten by deer, stepped on two years in a row and still came up as a very healthy plant. I have also had herbaceous peonies that I thought were dead which came up in a year or two. So have patience.

Thank you for all the info!!! I'll google the names that you mention, it sure sounds good!

I am not a gardener by any stretch of imagination, I am just a newly married that happened to move in a townhouse with a yard. HM, peony society.... sounds serious!

I adore peonies, and I never had any. I'll keep an eye when they start selling roots again. The ones I planted, I think that they made "eyes" as well, I removed the dirt with my fingers to see if they rot, and they didn't, and I know for sure one had only one eye, and now there seems to be a small group there.... I didn't lift them off, to see if they grow roots under. I'll wait, nothing to lose