Yearly Archive: 2015

Winterthur, a Saunder’s massive early peony, is just finishing up in one of our garden beds. With over an inch of new rainfall today, his blooms are still holding strong. All fieldwork was called off today due to the rain and thunderstorms. The weed crew finished up yesterday for their weekly adventure, without mosquitoes until about 8 PM last night. I don’t want to talk about mosquitoes too much as that was our first sightings of the season.

May Lilac is also finishing up her blooms with great color (and effects of the rain) still showing. Taking shots after a rain can be breathtaking in the right light conditions of which I had moments ago. Enjoy!

Here is the Bess Bockstoce peony in the starting bloom phase. For an early ‘pink’ she cannot be surpassed with an extended bloom time on the plant and in a vase. My second favorite pink is The Fawn. He or she will not be present for a couple of weeks. I know I mentioned Bess on previous post and you can view online, but I’m trying to update photos for next years website so you can see her now. If you love the color pink, Bess Bockstoce is your peony!

The ‘green’ peony color…of the foliage…continues today. A few smatterings of whites, corals, reds and pinks starting to show. Lots of work going on as we prepare for Peony Field Days before the rain begins on Tuesday night. Looks like later in the week the nice weather returns. Very deceiving when you look at the depth of field on this picture taken with a 300mm lens. In reality, these rows are 600 to 700 feet long. Each row contains 200 to 250 peonies.

On the other side of our driveway its rather tough to see too much color here as well. Bess Bockstoce, which is my favorite ‘pink’ double peony either in the garden or in a vase, started to show yesterday. When she is in bloom, what a show stopper! If you hover over the pic and click to enlarge, she is in upper left hand corner.  The first Red Charm blooms are just starting to show as well in the lower center rows. In other areas of the fields, May Lilac, Athena, Lovebirds, some new early surprises for next year and Archangel are almost in full bloom. This now moves up field color to about 5%. Long ways to go before Friday’s Peony Field Days. With 80 degrees forecast for tomorrow, my guess is some of the corals will start to pop. Rose Nobel, Seraphim, Nova, sub ‘huthii’, Reward and Lil’ Sweetie are done. No intersectional hybrid peonies showing yet.

  Our first Red Charm peony started to bloom yesterday in one of our ‘micro-climate’ sites. In a future post, I will talk more about this phenomenon as it pertains to gardening with peonies at our homes. I have a series of shots to follow that were shot with different aperture settings. Lets call this peony shot number 1.

Peony shot number 2.

Peony shot number 3.

Peony shot number 4. On a calm day, I like to adjust aperture versus shutter speeds in order get the color spot on. So which one is your favorite? As I mentioned in previous post, red is one of the toughest colors to shoot. It can go blue, brown or pink. During sunny days it can saturate and flare unless your using a diffuser. Yesterday I had a huge diffuser in the sky before the rains started. In these photos the ‘red’ is true to color on the Red Charm peony. Have fun with your aperture settings while shooting peonies in manual mode.

The rains came down and the sun came up today on the peonies. Over an 1 1/2″ of rain yesterday so field work, (and blooms) have stopped for today. The weather person says 39 degrees F tonight for a low? And who said Minnesota peonies aren’t tough! Green is still the color of the day with maybe 3% color in the fields. But oh what color! With the cooler spring and moderate temps, most of the blooms are HUGE and vibrant coloration. We will continue to update on percentage of color in the fields on a day to day basis. Peony bloom time is stuck in the very early varieties with very few early varieties showing.

Destination Peonies! Peonies are slowly opening up. So as of today, maybe 1-2% color in the fields. So far we are still in the very early to a few early varieties opening up. Here are all the dates, June 5, 6, 12 and 13 from 9 am to 5 PM (weather permitting). Thankfully over the years I think we’ve had to cancel about three dates due to storms. We will post on our Blog, Facebook and recorded message at 763.350.2051 should threatening storms, flooded driveway and a blizzard (ha, ha) prevents all from attending that specific day. The 5th and the 12th are Friday’s and the 6th and the 13th are Saturday’s. We are not open on Sunday’s. The address is 10958 70th St SW, Howard Lake, MN. Two of our fields will be open for walking and enjoying the beauty of peonies. One of our fields is wheelchair accessible and for some you can drive by during these specific days for a lovely view from our driveway. The second field to view requires waterproof boots depending on previous rains but its time to let you see some of the varieties that are not present in our other field. Please, please be careful when our gardening friends are getting out of their vehicles as parking will be north of the information tent on both sides of the driveway and up by our home where cars are turning around. Overflow parking once all the driveway spots are taken will have signs directing you to our riding arena which is located to the north of the turn around driveway circle. Also this is a working farm with electric fences and other items that are not safe to be around. If bringing small children please keep them in eye sight range and do not let them run in the peony fields as well as near the pond, animals, equipment and fencing. All who are on our property are entering at your own risk. Swenson Gardens, Keith and Becky Swenson and any staff member does not assume any liability implied, stated and incurred during your visit on our property. (Sorry but new insurance policy requires us to post this.) We want all to have a safe and enjoyable visit to our farm and most importantly, the peonies! As mentioned before, we LOVE dogs as long as they keep their owners on a leash or maybe its the other way around. Yes you may walk with them in the peony rows and around our farm as long as you pick up the you know what and take home with you. Did I say BRING YOUR CAMERA? Here’s another surprise, I will be giving introduction to photographing peonies tours throughout the day. I have a couple of diffusers you can use and will be taking your cameras to the next level of shooting for those of you who are still shooing in the ‘auto’ mode. Will continue to update the Blog and Facebook with percentage of color in the fields as we get closer to Peony Field Days. Might I even suggest two visits to Swenson Gardens fields? You will see different peonies blooming on the 12th & 13th vs the 5th and 6th. Time to head out and shoot some more peonies, with a camera of course!

And the ‘green’ continues. Not much happening in the fields for color over the past few days. Today the rains started around noon again. Took these photos from our front steps with a 70-300 zoom lens set at approximately 250 mm. Distance was at least 200 yards so the field of view is very deceiving. From our house to the end of our driveway is 440 yards and the tree in the background is at least a mile away from where this picture was taken. Pretty cool though! The hybridizing crew, aka Becky and Danny had to stop their pollen collecting early when the rain began. With all the tree peonies starting to open up, they were hoping to collect more pollen before the 85 degrees surprises us tomorrow. Currently 59 degrees outside so assuming we may have a 30 degree swing in temps tomorrow. This will definitely speed up the blooms for a couple of days but back down we go on Friday with another cold front coming through to spawn more storms. Tough to get photos of the very early varieties in the rain. Over the weekend maybe a handful of very early varieties like Rose Nobel, Sprite, Athena, Japanese and Lutea tree’s and Roselette’s Child started to bloom. Hope you all had a safe and happy Memorial Day weekend. Thanks again to all those who have and are serving in the military. We appreciate you and your family’s for serving our Country!

Continuous rain today has grounded the flight path of the Martins today. At last count we have at least 12 pairs nesting in our two houses. Lots of activity before the rain so am assuming it was feeding time. Once it clears up will be counting the young ones in this house as we have a cable system to raise and lower it. Fun!

I always look forward to Saunder’s, Seraphim peony to show. A prime example of a ‘white peony’ that truly is white. No hints of blush, pink, ivory or yellow. Its truly any honor to grow many of Saunder’s varieties, especially for me his Seraphim peony.

Green is still the color on 99.99% in our fields. A remnant of red from Lil’ Sweetie is still present towards the top of the field. The weed crew is doing a great job keeping ahead of the ‘other’ green in the fields. With more rain in the forecast this weekend and next week, I’m also forecasting very little color in the next week. June 5th and 6th are still the only two dates we are posting for our Peony Field Days. Will update more dates once we get in to next week. The colors on those peonies that have shown are very vibrant with the cooler weather and lack of sun. Hope your peonies are doing well in your gardens and for our friends in Zones 6 – 8a, now you have to wait till next spring. Sad but its always fun to see color when they first bloom. For our friends in Zones 2 & 3, hang in there! Your time will come too! Happy gardening!