In response to Karl's message on Paeonia.
I have a friend nearby who lives in one of the coastal valleys that
lead from the mountains to the ocean. Although only 1-2 miles from the
ocean he receives winter lows of 17 degrees F. He has tried to grow
paeonies with very little luck. Apparently the paeonies have not received
enough chilling hours to perform well. Even though it gets very cold at
night the days return with quite warm temperatures. He explained that
chilling hours here were determined by taking the number of cold hours (I
am not sure what temperature range this would be) in a 24 hour period and
substracting the number of warm hours (apparently some range over 60-70
degrees F). This of course results in a very low number of chilling hours
even though the night time temperature was quite low. This number of
chilling hours apperently also affected fruit trees such as apples and
pears. I have seen great paeonies at Filoli in San Francisco and also
great flowers from higher and colder mountain areas here in So Cal (Ramona
and Julian). I wonder what the magic combination for success is.
Jim