HOUSE AND GARDEN 
152 
September, 1911 
Some peonies hold their stems stiffly erect even under the weight of a large bloom, as in this 
French propagating field 
Other varieties are weak-stemmed and need mechanical support to keep the blooms 
from being beaten down into the mud 
For some reason the single varieties of peonies have been less widely 
grown, but no collection is complete without them 
As to soil, the peony is not at all par¬ 
ticular in its choice. It may be safely 
said that a garden that will grow vege¬ 
tables will produce satisfactory peony 
blooms. The plant prefers a medium 
heavy soil that is neither distinctly 
clayey nor sandy. The peony is very 
much like the rose in this respect, hav-. 
ing a fondness for a fairly heavy, rich’ 
soil. 
Because of the slowness of propaga¬ 
tion, gardeners will always procure their 
peonies as mature plants of one year, 
two years’ or three years’ growth. After 
the blooming period in May, June and 
July, the peony presents a luxuriant 
growth of foliage until late in the sum¬ 
mer ; this then begins to dry and finally 
entirely disappears with the early frosts. 
This habit of growth indicates that the 
plant is in a dormant state in fall and 
winter, so that the time to plant is from 
the middle of September until the first 
of November. 
The plants are secured from a nurseryman 
who may be depended upon to supply varieties 
that are really true to name, in the form of 
dormant roots, such as the one illustrated here¬ 
with. These roots will show at that time a num¬ 
ber of pinkish eyes, from which the next year’s 
growth starts very early in the Spring. 
While peonies have successfully been trans¬ 
planted in the spring, it is, to say the least, an ex¬ 
tremely difficult task and one that is usually sure 
to cause the.loss of some of these delicate succu¬ 
lent shoots, which are at that time of the year 
.pushing up through the ground. 
In planting the roots in the fall they should 
be set in carefully prepared soil which has been 
dug deeply and well enriched with very old pul¬ 
verized manure. Here again the peony is very 
much like the rose in its dislike of having manure 
directly in contact with its roots. For this rea¬ 
son the manure must be thoroughly incorporated 
with the soil by continued forking before the 
roots are set. The roots are then placed so that 
the upper eyes are not less than three inches be¬ 
low the surface of the soil, and they should be set 
from two to three and one-half feet apart, whether in 
rows or groups. After planting it is a good thing to. cover 
the ground with a good heavy mulch of manure as an 
added protection to the roots — although probably not a 
needed one for that reason — and to serve as a further en¬ 
richment of the soil. 
In the spring it would be well either to remove this 
mulch very early or else to allow it to remain until after 
all of the shoots have come up through it. Do not at¬ 
tempt to remove it from about the shoots themselves for 
this is sure to result in damage. 
The first care the peony may receive in the spring is 
not a necessary one. After the dark red shoots have ap¬ 
peared and have unfolded the leaves and branches, there 
will appear several buds at the end of each stem, in some 
cases five or six. It is impossible for the peony to bring 
all of these to maturity, so that to make the most use of 
the available energy it is a common practice to pinch off 
all but the largest bud, which will probably be the 
