In ground peonies waking up after a warm week 2014

Finally, most of my peonies have broken out of their shells, so here are the photos. We just had 2 days of temperatures over 80F which will make many plants including peonies break their dormancy.

Herbaceous

Blueberry shooting season

Blueberry plants are shrubs which mean they will sprout new shoots from their base. These new shoots can eventually be divided off to become new divisions, or left to grow. This ensures the survival of the plant. Shooting typically starts in the late summer, and continues until it is no longer warm enough to grow.

Here are a few pictures showing how this looks.

Solification of tree/ itoh peony stems

Towards the end of July, tree peonies usually start to develop brown stems as they start becoming woody and showing their true nature. Here are a few closeups just to show how it looks.  Once tree peonies darken up, they are usually set to survive as long as they are planted deeply enough to develop their own roots.

This one appears to be solid already. Like trees, their stems and branches tend to harden off completely before they ever expand in diameter.

Rise and fall of the yucca plant time lapse

This is the first time one of my yucca plants has ever flowered and here's a 40 day time lapse of the flower stalk from May 21st until June 30th. I hope the main plant survives the flowering to keep growing, but I'm not too worried since there are 2 little offsets coming off on either side.

21 May

Can tree peony seedlings grow more leaves in the summer?

One thing I have always wondered is if tree peony seedlings could gather up enough energy to produce even more leaves, or if what appears in the spring is everything that will appear for the year. Now that it has been nearly 4 months after the tree peony seedlings started to come up, some of them have started to grow more leaves. I think it depends on how good the soil is, the species, and perhaps if there is enough moisture.

Here are some of the ones putting on more leaves. The new summer leaves appear to be slightly larger than the ones appearing in the spring which means the plants have  already gathered some energy.

1 year old tree peonies have arrived

2 1/2 weeks ago on May 24th, I have received my order of 42 (1 year old) grafted Japanese tree peonies. I decided to start them all in 2-5 gallon pots depending on their size so I can get them well established on their own root systems before getting them in the ground.

Here's the 1st out of 2 boxes that came on May 24th.

My experience with growing blueberry plants after 3 years

I started growing blueberry plants back in 2009, and they finally started producing last year, and I'm finally starting out to figure out how to get good production on these plants. Here's the old blog on them. http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/2011/04/over-view-of-blueberries.html

Here's a view from the distance on how all the plants are doing. I mixed in a lot of peat moss & pine mulch into the bed to acidify the soil so the roots can reach into the soil.

Update on the itoh peonies

It has been 2 weeks since I received my 5 large itoh peony tubers which can be found on this link. http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/2012/05/unpacking-new-itoh-peonies.html#more

After dividing all of these guys into several pieces, they have since started to sprout leaves. It's not shown in these pictures, but after inspecting one of these pieces, they definitely have root growth starting as I've been watering them with clonex, willow tea, and really pampering them. They should start producing their own tuberous roots once the leaves are done growing.

One thing that I've noticed is that the larger pieces tend to be producing larger shoots which means that the size of the tuber matters a lot. They all still have plenty of growth left in them. These plants were recently watered with worm tea so the residue is still left on them.

Scarlet Heaven

Unpacking the new Itoh peonies

Last week, I received a box of 5 dormant itoh peony tubers. It was a pretty heavy box so I was definitely excited to see what was inside. I ordered Scarlet Heaven, Lemon Dream, Canary Brilliance, Cora Louise, and Old rose.

Here's the box it came in.

Update on all the peonies, itoh, tree and herbaceous species

One of the things I learned this year about peonies is that there is an intersectional peony which is a cross between a tree peony and a herbaceous peony which grows more vigorous that both. I find that these guys have woody stems, but also produce new eyes as prolifically as herbaceous peonies.

ITOH Peony

Here's my newest acquisition, a Julia Rose itoh peony which didn't have much root mass, but as long as it gets established in its pot, it should grow well. I planted it as deep as I could to encourage more eyes to form.

Receiving my new Bartzella double yellow intersectional itoh peony

As you can tell by my other blogs, I really like peonies and decided to get one of the most common types of itoh peonies which is a hybrid between a tree peony and a herbaceous peony. Some of them are supposed to die back all the way to the ground while others will develop hard stems like this one as they can have characteristics of both types. The one constant is that the foliage looks more similar to that of a tree peony.

Here it is all leafed out since it came from Tennessee. 

Update on the tree peonies

After 2 weeks of very warm weather with highs usually in the lower 70s and lows around 50, all the peonies have really taken off like crazy. It is only 16 days after my initial blog on peonies and some of them have gone from barely poking out to being well leafed out. Here's the link to the peony blog from 16 days ago to show the huge difference. http://stevesbamboogarden.blogspot.com/2012/03/tree-peonies-starting-to-wake-up.html

Starting with the tree peony seedlings, most of them are almost fully grown now. They might need protection if we get a late freeze.

Tree peonies starting to wake up

Ever since the start of February I have started to see tree peony seedlings pop up all over the place, however some of them got frost bitten since it is too early for them to start coming up. In order to survive, they simply need to successfully put out a leaf and take in energy over the summer so they can grow a lot stronger the next year.

Here are some of the TP seedlings from 23 February 2012. These are some of the ones coming out too early for their own good since their initial leaf is prone to freeze damage.