Yeah, I’m telling you I start off well with saving the tags..try to put in the same spot every time..yet I can never find the tags when I go to look for them! I swear I’m about to make a notebook and staple all the tags and categorize them with pruning times and fertilizer times...this way I never have to do the search...btw I’ve been saying this for 3 years..still no book made lol

lol, trust me that has happened to me many many times, that's why I just gave up and started taking pictures of the tags, this way I know they are on my phone somewhere

I have tags all over the darn house too

Great idea! Pics from now on :)

;-)

I have a few mystery peonies too, literally no idea what they could be, part of the fun in waiting for them to come up - although it can really test your patience lol.

Hopefully it will give you a bud or two this year so you can try to guess what you have. I planted some mystery roots from home depot a couple years ago that are likely going to come up this year, they were $1 so no big loss if its horrible - then again I've never seen a horrible peony so i'll take the gamble

glossy the OP's picture would have buds on it if there would be any blooms this year. For those that do not know there is seldom an up when planting peony roots. Most roots with eyes before division will be lying underground between horizontal and a 45 degree angle. Seldom do any of the more vertical roots ever reach the top of the rootball to form eyes.

They look healthy! Hope you get some blooms next year. Check your local garden centers and see if they have any with buds if you are itching for some blooms. My first four peonies were "mystery" peonies, and they are all beautiful. That's the great thing about peonies, they are all gorgeous. Welcome to the addiction. :)

maifleur01, i have quite a few peonies at approximately this stage, the buds on them are so tiny that you can barely see them yet - easy to miss especially if you haven't grown them before, hence the 'hopefully' it will give you a bud or two, it's not likely first year but stranger things certainly have happened in my garden

I was just going to say, I heard they don’t bloom the 1st year or two? But again idk how much truth to that?

It’s unlikely that they do but I’ve had many first year blooms, I actually have some popping up now that I planted in the fall. One of my fall planted 2017 peonies has 4 buds, again not the norm but it can happen. I also have spring 2017 planted peonies that have 10-15 buds on them right now

Bare root planting and blooms really depends on the size and quality of the tuber, my Home Depot mystery tuber didn’t bloom for 2 years but I figured as much as it was a small tuber , it’s got 5 buds this year

glossy having had over 300 hundred peonies in the past and just under 200 currently I know where to look for buds. The axels where buds would be are not in the shape that they would have buds. You are correct in that the late doubles start with a very small bud which grows in size. If you have any currently in the small bud stage take a picture of that area from the side and another similar branching without a bud. Compare how the stems cup the first vs. just splitting on the second.

maifleur01 fascinating, I have never looked at it from that point but rest assured I will be out in my gardens comparing the axels later today when the rain quits. My collection is only around 50 peonies so I will have ample subjects lol.

Do you grow any tree peonies? These are new to me and I noticed one of them has both the tree peony and the herbaceous peony growing at the moment, from what I gather I should separate the herbaceous growth from the tree growth, would you happen to have some pointers on when I should do this and how best to do it?

If the herbaceous part has bloomed you need to decide if that part of the plant is worth saving. Wait until this fall then dig the whole plant up. Look to see if there are enough roots coming out of the tree peony stem that will allow it to grow on it's own. Remove any herbaceous growth. Cut below the stem growth and remove that portion. You may have to leave some of the nurse root because the tree peony does not have enough roots of it's own. If this is what you find dig a hole deep enough to cover more of the stem. I have two tree peonies that I planted over ten years ago that have herbaceous plants starting to grow from the base. I also have a Shima Nishiki that was apparently grafted on High Noon roots and needs to have the excess removed. The latest one is a pretty single white that I will try to keep. Many nurse roots are simply pink singles from whatever seedlings were available when the person was grafting. Some areas also use Fen Dan Bai seedlings for grafting but I have never noticed any nurse root growth from the ones I know were grafted this way.

I grow all kinds and sizes of peonies but like the dark red flowering tree peonies best. My smallest peony is Thumbelina which is about 6-8 inches tall in a good year to Oukan that is over 5 feet tall.

Maifleur01, I see that you are kinda an expert about Peony's. I only have 2questions for you. 1, do peony's do good growing in shade? 2) which Peony is the prettiest, and in what conditions does it do best?

poaky I am a collector of peonies and at one time had about 300 of various shapes and sizes. I experimented with various growing conditions and other things just to see what happened.

As far as do peonies do good growing in shade? it depends on the peony and what you consider doing good. All dark flowering peonies blooms will last longer if they are in shade. What I have found is that unless tree or shrub roots interfere as long as you can stand in the spot you want the peony and look up and at about a 20 degree angle and see the sky peonies are fine. My reasoning is that with the distance from the sun most of the light spectrum in sunlight will reach the ground. The vegetation/buildings would only block some the yellow part of the spectrum. Parentage will have some effect on growth in shade. Some of the ancestors of the current peonies were from grasslands where shade is scarce. Others are from mountainous areas that would only receive direct sunlight part of the day IF they were on the side of the mountain where the sun shown directly. Many mountainous areas may only have direct sun on one side of a valley for a few minutes a day. You would have to research where the peonies you want are from.

There is no prettiest peony. Each person has their own taste. My favorite was a small less than 18 inch species peony that I lost last year. It only had a single pink single flower on each stem but what made it a favorite was as it emerged from the ground it looked like a chalice. After the blooms were over the leaves were there to enjoy as they had a slightly darker edge with a soft fuzzy appearing underside. When touched the underside was smooth so I loved the contrast.