06.12.11
Posted in Peonies at Fina Gardens at 8:27 am by Administrator
The cut flower season at FinaGardens got under way last week and the flowers have never looked better. We finished cutting Red Charm. This big red bomb is always our earliest. We’ve cut thousands of Edulis Superba—one of the earliest pink doubles to bloom. It’s also among the most fragrant. Festiva Maxima’s large white blooms flecked with crimson are also being cut now, along with the classic white, Duchesse de Nemours.
All our flower are cut in the bud stage and held in our cooler until sold—mostly whole sale customer. We’ve held some for as long as 3 months. You can keep marshmallow soft peony buds in your refrigerator for a few weeks by wrapping them immediately in newspaper and place them in a plastic bag.
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05.21.11
Posted in Peonies at Fina Gardens at 10:17 am by Administrator
We’re still looking for the first blooms of the season, which is running weeks behind a more normal peony year. But Rubra Plena Tenufolia—our fernleaf—has some buds near bursting. The small, double lipstick flowers on these are beautiful, but its the soft green, finely-cut foliage that really sets this peony apart. It is, by far, our best selling peony. The rows of it this time of year are striking. There’s nothing else like it in the spring garden. Our early herbaceous varieties like Lady Gay and Firelight are not far behind.
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05.14.11
Posted in Peonies at Fina Gardens at 1:55 pm by Administrator
Peonies made some headway earlier this week, but this weekend’s big chill has put a damper on the prospects of seeing blooms any time soon. The race is on between Early Bird and our fernleaf peonies for first-bloom honors. Rockii or Flare tree peonies are close behind. Among our early hybrids Lady Gay looks to have an edge over Firelight. It’s still looking like our cutflower varieties won’t start blooming until sometime after June 15 because of the cool spring. But coupled with the ample moisture from last summer through fall and this spring, we expect extra large blossoms and very rich colors.
Just a caution to peony gardeners who may be sharing in the very humid and damp weather we’ve been encountering. The long periods where moisture stays on the leaves and stems of your peonies is ideal for botrytis or grey mold problems, especially with temps in the 60-70 degree F range. It would be wise to use a garden fungicide as a way to prevent damage to your young plants. In this kind of weather, an application every week to 10 days in advisable.
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05.08.11
Posted in Peonies at Fina Gardens at 7:58 am by Administrator
Finally we’ve begun to string together some days conducive to growing peonies and the plants are responding. The fernleaf peonies have fat nickel-sized buds and some of the early hybrids like Lady Gay, Firelight and Abalone Pearl are nearing a foot in height. The flare tree peonies are showing lots of flower buds this year. Still it looks like the peony flowering season is at least two and probably three weeks behind last year’s early season, when we starting cutting stems for market on May 26.
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04.11.11
Posted in Peonies at Fina Gardens at 7:52 pm by Administrator
Although this morning we were greeted with about a half inch of snow on the ground the weather earlier in the week was wonderfully spring-like, triggering the first growth in our fields of peonies.
The fernleaf peonies are always early risers and its always a pleasure to watch their unusual, but charming sprouts push through the soil. It seems that the cooler the temperature, the redder their finely dissected foliage emerges before turning that delicate spring green.
Daily we see our Rockii or flare tree peonies come more and more to life after wintering through some minus 30-degree weather this past winter. These are plants that have never been babied, planted out in a field with no protection from the cold, drying winds of winter. We’re just beginning to propagate from these plants so that we can offer them to gardeners who want an absolutely hardy tree peony even in Zone 3. Our propagating stock now has a number of large mother plants that make it through our harsh winter without any die back.
Other peonies have been pushing through as well. Although not a particularly early blooming peony, Nice Gal is among those that send up some the first shoots. The contrast of red shoots against this mornings snow is quite a sight.
It’s interesting to see the great variation in the emergence of the different varieties of peonies. We have somewhere north of 110 varieties and when they emerge doesn’t seem to coincide all that well with their bloom dates. Carol, that huge-blooming, true red cultivar is always among the early starters, but it doesn’t open until well into mid-season.
New peony gardeners also should be mindful that the peonies they planted in the fall may take considerably longer to emerge that an established plant of that same cultivar. The difference can be as much as 7 to 21 days. So don’t be too concerned if your newly planted peonies aren’t showing sprouts as quickly as the rest of your garden.
When you do see those first sprouts coming forth, we think its a good idea to apply a fungicide to prevent gray mold or botrytis infections. Most any normal garden fungicide will be effective and, if you want to keep your gardens organic, look for a copper-based fungicide—many of which meet organic restrictions. This preventative action is particularly important in establishing new peony plantings, because of the limited number of stems that will appear in the first year or two. If those stems are damaged or lost entirely to gray mold, the entire plant may be lost. It certainly won’t have the same vigor as an uninfected plant, which means it will take longer to establish into a mature, healthy clump with dozens of blooms.
Applying a fungicide every 10-days up nearly to bloom time in the first 2 years of establishing a peony is a good precautiona that will result in plants that will provide decades of pleasure in the garden.
Bright red double blooms on the tenufolia rubra plena
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Posted in Peonies at Fina Gardens at 7:52 pm by Administrator
This is our first blog.
Spring has finally arrived. Almost all of the snow is gone and yesterday we did a quick tour of the fields. It was a good winter for peonies. We had enough snow cover all winter that there was no heaving of the roots in the rows of newly planted peonies. The grafted tree peonies are starting to leaf out. Some of the rockii tree peonies in the field are also leafing out. There are 2 tree peony seedlings that are up about 2 inches in the nursery bed.
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