Post by Bob Johnson on Apr 16, 2022 20:20:24 GMT
You hear so many negative things about growing peonies in pots, and I'm not a fan of that either. But I feel differently about seedlings, and have had quite a bit of success with seedlings in pots, and growing them on to blooming size. I usually start all my seedlings in pots to begin with, in groups. But I transplant them to larger pots every year. At the end of their second year of growth, I'll move them individually into #1 pots, and to #2 pots the next year and so on. By the time I get them into #3 pots, often they will be of blooming size with 3-4 stems. If I want to continue to keep them in pots, I'll knock them out of their pots in the fall, scrape away much of the soil that's around their root ball, and then put them back in the #3 pots with new potting soil.
Why in the world would someone want to do this ? For myself, usually I only do this with very special crosses. Ones which I hope to use as pollen parents in the coming season, and to see if they might make seeds themselves. Our spring frosts are so regular here, that keeping these special things in pots gives me the opportunity to bring them inside at night.
Also, by bringing them inside, they can avoid our cold night time temperatures, and the plants will bloom much earlier than if they were in the ground outside, allowing me to collect their pollen to use on earlier things. If I get blooms, I also have a chance to see if they are something I'll want to devote the very limited space in my home garden to.
But mostly I want to move them along quickly, for breeding and evaluation reasons.
In any case, as seedlings, it seems that peonies can do quite well in pots during their first few years. Much more so that plants which are grown from divisions in pots. I sink these things up to their rim in the ground over winter, but once they start growing in spring, I have the opportunity to protect them and manipulate their bloom time much easier than if they were planted in the ground.
This seedling in a #2 pot.
Why in the world would someone want to do this ? For myself, usually I only do this with very special crosses. Ones which I hope to use as pollen parents in the coming season, and to see if they might make seeds themselves. Our spring frosts are so regular here, that keeping these special things in pots gives me the opportunity to bring them inside at night.
Also, by bringing them inside, they can avoid our cold night time temperatures, and the plants will bloom much earlier than if they were in the ground outside, allowing me to collect their pollen to use on earlier things. If I get blooms, I also have a chance to see if they are something I'll want to devote the very limited space in my home garden to.
But mostly I want to move them along quickly, for breeding and evaluation reasons.
In any case, as seedlings, it seems that peonies can do quite well in pots during their first few years. Much more so that plants which are grown from divisions in pots. I sink these things up to their rim in the ground over winter, but once they start growing in spring, I have the opportunity to protect them and manipulate their bloom time much easier than if they were planted in the ground.
This seedling in a #2 pot.