Your Guide To Pruning Your Peonies So You Can Enjoy Gorgeous Blooms In The Spring
With their beauty, sweet fragrance, and long lifespan, peonies are a favorite garden staple during the summer. But, to preserve their health and ensure gorgeous blooms next spring, it’s important to prune your peonies during the fall.
Sure, it’s technically okay to leave your peonies intact throughout the winter. However, there are plenty of upsides to pruning (or cutting back your plant).
Primarily, it can remove old growth and any lingering diseases, allowing your flowers to start fresh next season. Plus, getting rid of withering, brown foliage will improve the appearance of your garden, helping it look cleaner and brighter.
As for herbaceous peonies, these grow both above-ground foliage and flowers, in addition to thick storage roots below that store energy for future growth.
Clearing away the dried foliage in autumn helps minimize the risk of diseases, such as powdery mildew. It also lets sunlight hit the crown of the plant, which is where buds and fresh growth will emerge next spring.
Luckily, pruning doesn’t require a ton of fancy tools or effort, either, so here’s everything you need to know about how to do it yourself.
How To Prune Your Peonies
First, it’s important to pick the right time to prune. It’s ideal to cut back peonies in either late summer or early fall. This can vary, but as soon as your leaves look diseased or brown, it’s time to start.
Some people choose to prune very early in spring as well. Herbaceous peonies should be cut back to the ground once their stems and foliage turn brown and dry out. While this typically occurs in the fall, pruning can be delayed until early spring as long as it’s completed before new growth appears.
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When you’re ready to get your hands dirty, you will need two tools: bypass pruners and a pruner cleaner. The cleaner isn’t mandatory, but it’s smart to sanitize your bypass pruners to prevent the potential spread of any plant diseases.
You should begin by using your bypass pruners to cut each stem close to the ground and dispose of the removed foliage. A garden rake can also be useful for gathering clippings or clearing any heavily deteriorated leaves.
As you prune, be careful not to damage your plant’s crown. This area, which is located at or just below the soil surface, contains the buds for next season’s growth.
Finally, leave a small portion. After peony foliage starts to decline, you can cut back the stems to about an inch above the ground.
Common Mistakes To Avoid
Despite pruning being a simple process, you should be wary of a few common mistakes.
For instance, if you have peonies with permanent growth, like tree peonies, they require a different approach than herbaceous peonies. You should avoid cutting into the woody, bark-covered parts of the plant. Instead, focus on trimming only the soft tissue.
There are also varieties that are a hybrid between woody and herbaceous types. They might develop a woody stem, depending on your growing conditions and climate.
If the plant dies back to the ground, treat it like a herbaceous peony and cut it all the way back. Or, if it forms a woody stem, trim above that portion.
Lastly, try not to prune your plants too early, which can interfere with their preparation for winter dormancy. Rather, wait until the leaves have fully dried and turn brown.
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