What does a cooler half full of peony roots look like? Becky took a wonderful pic before this cooler was absolutely full. Some of you have asked why do we store the processed roots in a cooler? Well here you go, the thoughts for us anyways, is the fact that we can maintain a constant temperature and humidity level vs storing them elsewhere. The key though is not to store at too cold of a temp whereby they think its time for winter. Thus a constant temp of 55 to 56 degrees affords them less stress especially when it has been in the mid 80’s all this week. Humidity is important as well as you don’t want the humidity too low where by the moisture is removed from the roots or too high which may lend itself to surface mold so we settled on 70% for now. All the tricks of a peony grower to make sure the roots are out of our ground, stored properly and then they can find a new home in your gardens! If you haven’t been liking or following us on Facebook, Becky has a whole series on what our process is at Swenson Gardens. A MAJOR milestone today as the picking and packing crew completed the majority of the orders with only 38 more to go tomorrow. Congratulations team on setting a new one day picking and packing record of 315 orders. They did a great job and when finished the packed roots went into another cooler and the remaining roots went into this cooler. Lots of love expended on our peonies whether in the ground or out! If only the peonies knew how much work it takes grow and sell them!
