Re: peonies
- To: m*@ucdavis.edu
- Subject: Re: peonies
- From: K*@aol.com
- Date: Sun, 10 Dec 2000 23:13:03 EST
In a message dated 12/10/100 8:31:47 PM EST, ikuffel@cisco.com writes:
<< What are the chances of growing peonia in our medit climate? >>
I'm not in the Bay Area, but I've got a couple of plants of a huge, luscious,
rose-scented, unnamed double pink herbaceous peony that I got from an elderly
neighbor lady who grows both the double pink and a big double red. She sells
peonies and irises every year from her driveway. I meandered by at the end
of her sales season one year, and she sold me both plants of the double pink
for $2.00! I figured it was hard to go wrong at that price. They didn't
bloom for a couple of years, and the first few years they bloomed, it was
onesies and twosies. Now they just perform beautifully every year--dozens of
enormous, fragrant, frilly pink flowers on each plant. They're only flaw is
their floppiness. I've never bothered to stake them, and the flowers are so
huge and heavy that they invariably end up flopped over. I try to cut them
before that happens. They make the most spectacular and long-lasting
bouquets of any flower I know. My advice would be to seek out someone in
your area who grows them successfully and try to obtain the same variety or
varieties. Good luck.
Kurt Mize
Stockton, California
USDA Zone 9
