Peonies are wonderful perennial flowers that will undoubtedly become a decoration for your garden. It is not for nothing that peony flowers are very popular among gardeners, since they are unpretentious in care and cultivation, and they will delight you with their beautiful flowers for 15-20 years. Peonies have been growing in one place for many years and do not require transplanting.
The way we care for peonies directly affects their flowering, life time and decorativeness. Peony care includes weeding, loosening the soil, and regular watering. The peony takes root well on loamy, loose soil. Heavy soil requires deep cultivation (50-60 cm), followed by the addition of sand, compost, peat and humus. Peonies need light partial shade, but in general, the site should be sunny, without waterlogged soil - excessive moisture is detrimental to the peony.
Peonies are propagated mainly by seedlings of a certain variety. They should be immediately identified in some place, since the plant does not like transplants very much - it can stop blooming for several years. A flower transplant involves dividing the rhizome, but not earlier than after 10-15 years. Peony is a very fragile plant, so all processes are done as carefully as possible.
Planting peonies
You need to plant or transplant peonies only in the fall. Planting is best done at the end of August or the beginning of September, so that the plant has time to take root in the cold. Sometimes planting is done in the spring. And only after 5 years you can divide the bushes.
The planting hole for a flower should be about 80 cm deep (no more than a meter), about 70 cm wide, since the peony with its roots penetrates quite deeply into the ground and they spread rather quickly. Fulfillment of these requirements ensures the growth of the plant over a long period. In the case of planting several bushes on a site, the gap between each should be about 1 meter. The prepared pit is filled with compost - no more than 3 buckets of pus, wood ash and superphosphate - 500 g, lime - up to 100 g. The mixture mixes well with the soil from the hole. The buds, after planting, should be at the level of the soil.
Manure is placed at the bottom of the pit, its dense ball is 10 cm.Then everything is covered with a 20 cm layer of earth, then the compaction stage follows. Then you need to pour the prepared soil with a mound and pour it thoroughly with water to compact everything well. A bush is placed in the middle of the mound so that the buds are flush with the edge of the pit. The roots should be covered with soil, filling all the void. After planting, the flower must certainly be watered.
If the peony bush has dropped and the buds are below the level of the fossa, then it is necessary to carefully pull the plant up, sprinkling it with earth. A small mound is made over the base of the plant. It is important that the buds are deepened by no more than 2.5 cm, because if the planting is too deep, the peonies will not be able to bloom for a long time, and it happens that they will not bloom at all. In winter, when the soil freezes over, the planted peonies should be covered with dry leaves. In the spring, dry leaves and branches are carefully removed so as not to damage the young shoots.
Details about planting peonies
Peony care: growing, pruning
In the first summer, immediately after planting, the buds of the peonies are cut off so that flowering does not weaken the still weak bushes. In the second year, flowers are also partially removed. To make the flower large, the buds located on the sides are cut as early as possible. During the cutting of flowers, shoots with 4 leaves are left, otherwise the flowering of peonies the next year will be much weaker.
It is important to keep the soil in moderate humidity during the summer, especially in the first year after transplanting. Fertilizer is applied only 2 years after planting. Fall or early spring is good for sprinkling a bucket of compost on the bushes. During the growing season, it is advised to use a full range of mineral fertilizers (100 grams per square meter).
Reproduction of peonies
Peonies can be quickly propagated not only by dividing seedlings, but also by other methods. In the spring, after the snow has melted, renewal buds are used for reproduction, they are located directly near the root. It is necessary to separate the buds from the ground, cut them off together with the young adventitious roots and part of the stem. Only half of all kidneys are trimmed. The cut buds are planted in a prepared mixture - sand, humus, turf soil. The top of the kidneys should be at ground level.
Rooting mode of bushes: air humidity - 80-90%, temperature - 18-20 degrees. Rooting is complete in about 40 days. Kidney cuttings, which are cut at the very end of July - early August, also take root well. The buds are cut with a small part of the root (3 to 5 cm). Then the base of the bush is covered with new soil. A full flowering peony bush is formed over 3-4 years.
If reproduction is done by layering, then the grown stems are treated with a solution that includes peat, deciduous soil and sand. The mound should be 30-35 cm high. This procedure is done in the spring. You can put a box without a bottom on a peony bush, the dimensions of which are 50x50x35 cm.When the stem begins to grow, it must be filled with a mixture as it grows. It should be slightly damp all the time. In late autumn, the hardened stems are cut close to the ground and planted separately.
They also use stem cuttings. They should be prepared even before the beginning of the flowering period (late May - early June). They are used from the middle region of the sprout so that each stalk has two internodes. The leaves of the upper internodes are cut to a third of the length, and the lower leaves are cut off completely. The cuttings are planted in a box filled with pre-washed sand. Planting depth - from 2.5 to 3.5 cm. For 14 days, the cuttings should be in the shade, ventilated and kept in conditions of increased moisture. As a rule, only half of the cuttings are hardened.
When dividing large bushes, there will always be broken rhizomes without visible buds. But there are also dormant buds, so the broken roots do not need to be thrown away. The damaged areas are cut with a sharp knife, the roots are cut into pieces, each about 6-7 cm long. The cut parts are powdered with charcoal, dried and planted at a shallow depth. The ground should be moist when disembarking. Some roots will sprout in the second year.
Also, peonies can be propagated by seeds. Sowing is usually done in early autumn. For these purposes, a room room or a sand box located in the greenhouse room is used. The temperature regime for the content is + 15-20 degrees. After 35-40 days, when the first roots appear, the container with the sown seeds should be transferred to a place where it is not more than 1-5 degrees Celsius. The roots can also be buried directly in the snow, and after 2 weeks they can be placed back in greenhouse conditions, where the first shoots will appear soon. The sand must be kept in a state of constant moisture. You can sow directly into open ground immediately after the seeds are ripe. The plant emerges in May. This method has a low seed germination rate, in contrast to the first option.Peonies bloom only in the fourth or even the fifth year after planting.
Diseases and pests of peonies
Many gardeners very often have a question: why do not peonies bloom? The reasons are very different: an old bush, a flower planted too deeply, the need for a transplant, a young bush and it is too early for it to bloom, too acidic or over-fertilized soil, dry soil, the buds are frozen in winter, the flower has suffered during the spring frost, the plant is sick.
The most common flower disease is gray rot... It is facilitated by rain, wind, warm damp weather, ants in buds. The first sign of the disease is the sudden wilting of the stems. With a strong defeat with gray rot, the bushes simply disintegrate. To avoid problems, you need to adhere to the correct agricultural techniques. Diseased flowers should be watered in the spring and sprayed with organic fungicides during the growing season. It is also recommended to sprinkle wood ash around the peonies, about 200 grams per square meter.
