Yearly Archive: 2016

No matter where you are at in your peony season, Becky and I spent some time this afternoon cleaning up the peonies around our home. Hopefully these tips will help you as home gardeners tidy up your peony beds. As you can see by some of the pictures, do we do this every spring? Well no not exactly but with some extra time on our hands and 70 F degree temps today, we had to do something! Here are some examples that I shot and a video will be forthcoming soon.

Does this look familiar in your gardens? Yes grass and clover are not friends of peonies! You will see peonies growing in grass and overtime they may start to decline. We do use cover crops in a couple of our test fields, but we are going away from cover crops as the growth of the peonies are way behind our other fields where we do not use cover crops.

Now doesn’t this look better? For those of you with grass growing around your peonies, we suggest using a gardening knife or spade to gently remove as much of the grass roots (no pun intended) in order for the peonies to flourish. Keep the grass as far out as the drip line of the peonies to assure continued growth over its life time.

Landscape rock is an attractive feature in many of our beds, but oh dear do they do a number on peony soldiers trying to make it out of the ground. Not only do the rocks prevent their growth but you normally find plastic underneath the rock. Because peonies grow in width, after removing the rock we also ran into the plastic preventing any peony soldiers from making it up. Once you remove the rock away, also make sure to slit the plastic and tuck it under the plastic far enough away from the peony soldiers. We hadn’t done this for about 3-years and noticed many peony soldiers under the plastic that will now make it to the surface.

We will continue to leave the rocks away from the peony soldiers now that we know how detrimental these peonies were in this landscape rock bed. I’m sure the peonies were happy again!

One of the ever popular landscape material is shredded wood mulch. Side-note, I am not a fan of Cyprus mulch or any dye colored mulch. It is also a good idea to be careful on any hardwood mulch. I like Western Red Cedar is it lasts longer and does not decay and pack down like the other wood mulches. Yes its more expensive, but that’s what we use and are very happy with its look, smell and well being in our flowering beds. So back to the problem with all shredded wood mulch, though not as bad as landscape rock, wood too can smother out peony soldiers if it is not removed from the peonies.

The sun just happened to peak out from the clouds while taking the ‘after’ shot. Like landscape rock, remove as much of the wood mulch away from the peonies to about the drip line. This too will help your peonies dirt to dry out vs remaining moist around the peonies. Sometimes if it is a very wet spring/summer, we may remove the mulch farther away in order for the dirt to dry out faster. Knowing that peonies do not like continually moist growing sites, bare dirt and good drainage are a must!

Take Redd’s advice, remove your landscape material away from peonies and watch them thrive!

Oh the joys of our Magnolia tree blooming! Sorry but I can’t scratch and sniff the pictures but for those of you who may grow this, you know the scent of this glorious tree. The former owners of our farm planted it many years ago and said the highlight of their spring was the scent from the Magnolia. Shot this with my favorite lens the Sony/Zeiss 24-70 F2.8 ZA SSM which is the main lens for all our peony shots on SwensonGardens.com.  Enjoy!

Do you remember this shot from a previous post regarding when to remove mulch from first year peonies in USDA Zones 2-5? Yes this is the same tulip clump shot almost 2-weeks ago! Not much has changed since the onset of colder temps. This morning we had 24 F degrees here on the peony farm. With warmer temps expected next week, we should have tulip blooms in a couple of weeks?

This Japanese Tree Peony seedling has not changed much from a couple of weeks ago. Shot with the same macro lens as in previous posts today, really brings out the detail of the buds soon to be formation of the stems, foliage and yes blooms. Don’t you just love peonies?

One lone peony soldier provides an excellent shot to detail these amazing plants! It is so much fun walking around the fields looking for peony soldiers that provide that special shot.

These first year peony soldiers seem content to stand at attention waiting for warmer weather. No matter what peony zone you live in, please enjoy all aspects of the 2016 peony season!

Finally some spring color on the peony farm! The crocus arrived today ushering hope for more coloring against the pale landscape.

Our Magnolia Tree is soon to pop with its delicate white blooms and fragrance that is almost as nice as the Rose Pearl peony.

Now on to my second favorite willow called the ‘Arctic Willow’. Its grayish/blue winter stems are now changing to their spring/summer coloring and yes, the buds are forming.

Finding another American Highbush Cranberry shrub left me in awe, again, looking through the macro lens. Man do I need color soon as this is the second pic of this shrub knowing how close this red is to our ‘America’ peony!

We LOVE milkweed here on our peony farm! This portrait shot of last years crop provided a tremendous shot. This was shot with my favorite macro lens, a Tamron SP 90mm F/2.8 Di. Rumor has it the Dii is coming out soon and hopes of having one by peony bloom time is on my wish list. Milkweed is a staple for Monarch butterflies so we try NOT to mow down any in the pastures and ditches.

Is macro photography fun or what? Moving in a little closer provided this unbelievable shot! Three of last years seeds still remained in the pod so bring on the macro! With a 15 mph wind, had to bump up the shutter speed to catch the fine hairs attached to the seeds.

Okay so I love pebbles, yes pebbles. Macro photography is a completely different world when looking though the lens. I can’t wait for the carpels and staminodes to show themselves in the peony blooms!

Mr Mischief, aka Redd, was at it again today when I strolled through our peony farm. From previous posts, he has a tendency to find…yes, SNAKES! Well little did he know that one of the self defenses of snakes is a nasty tasting slime that didn’t go very well with him! Will he now stay away from snakes? Probably not, but we still love him on the peony farm!

For those of you following us on Facebook, a name our calf promotion will be posted shortly. In the mean time please give a warm welcome to a new baby boy born this morning. This photo was taken about an hour after birth and moments later he was walking on his own. He is a long legged Dexter and I really feel sorry for the mom as he is a hunk!

As you can see his mom, Squeaker, was not too happy with me getting a bit close to her new son. She warmed up to me though and allowed this photo even though her ears were pinned. Amazing how protective she is by cornering her calf and then laid down in front of him so the other noisy cows couldn’t get close to him.

This is a bittersweet post for me as I introduce you to Elvis. Yes Elvis is in the barn! Elvis is our new herd sire (bull) as our peony composting team continues to add more employees. He is a red Dexter about a year and a half old. For those of you following Swenson Gardens Facebook, about two weeks ago I had to put my buddy, Buford down. We tried all means possible to extend his life, but being the former herd sire at 10+ years old, his time as head of the peony composting team came to an end. All our cattle are like extended family to us and many tears were shed. Seeing him suffer is something that I do not like to see with any animals. Of course now with Elvis, a new chapter begins and yes he does have an attitude. Don’t you just love his curly hair? Almost reminds me of a bouquet of peonies! Welcome Elvis to your new home!

So much for the warmer temps that equate to peony growth in the fields! With the 30 F + degree temps as of late, peony growth has halted and so have the tulips! No worries here with the temps as they’ve been staying at or slightly below freezing at night. The last of the mulch between the rows were removed yesterday and thoughts of the weed crew starting this morning were quickly replaced with hot chocolate and a warm house. Actually hope for a killing frost to nip some of the early weeds but this spring, you never know. I don’t have the link available but please go to YouTube, search Swenson Gardens and subscribe to our video channel. We uploaded the first of many to follow this season on all the facets of planting, maintenance, tips and other how to’s. Also for those of you not on Facebook, you still can visit our Facebook site for various specials that we’ll be running through the season. You do not have to have a Facebook page to view our public site. Hope all of your peonies are doing great and stay tuned for more posts as the peony season continues!

Wow is this a strange spring for peonies and yes, Purple Martins! This is the earliest sightings of Purple Martins since we’ve been following them for the past 8-years here on the farm. An adult male and female displayed their aerobatic skills and then popped into one of the homes in our 12 unit house. Picked up another fabulous house today from a friend who also has the Martin disease. He does a wonderful job in making these houses so we now have 36 units available. Tried to get a picture but they just stayed inside their new home with the cold and windy temps outside. Martin’s will send out scouts to scope out new areas which are normally last years fledglings. This pair looked right at home and as mentioned before were adults. Welcome back Martin’s to your peony farm!

The peonies are coming! For those of you who have learned this from us before, bear with me as I go over the proverbial question; ‘when should I remove my mulch on my new peonies’? This will be an all encompassing answer for USDA Zones 2-5 that we suggest mulching all first year peony plants. The short answer is ‘when the tulips are 6-10 inches high’. I’m not an agronomist or soil chemist or weather person, but I always look for tulips, period. Over many decades of growing peonies as a hobby and commercially, tulips have never failed me. If yours or your neighbors tulips are this height, start removing and discarding your mulch!

We also receive questions on ‘why do I have to mulch my new peonies’? Well, the only time we lost significant amount of newly planted peonies was when we did NOT mulch in our 4b zone. That was the last year we did that! Here’s my dissertation, I’m not so much concerned with winter ambient temperatures, unless they get down to -40F actual for herbaceous, -30F for intersectionals and -20F actual for Japanese tree peonies. (By the way, our Roger Anderson’s tree peony seedlings are still a few years away so will leave those out of this conversation for now.) What I am concerned with is the depth of frost in the ground.

When the ground warms up in the spring, the frost is pushed to the surface as the lower levels begin to warm. In a year with less frost depth, no problem, but here and other lower zones, frost can be 4 feet or more especially if there is not adequate snow depths. Because the bare-root peonies were planted in their dormancy phase, they have not developed their root structure to hold them in place. As the frost layer is pushed higher quickly with the warming sunlight, we need to allow the ground to warm up slower. Thus mulching is the key to allow the ground to warm up slower and prevent the roots from heaving. So back to our tulips, they are truly the sign to let us mere peony gardeners know when mulch removal is appropriate.

So this is the earliest we have ever removed mulch and I’m sure we may see colder temps before the peony soldiers start growing their stems. So what happens if below 32F degree temps return? For us anyways, it is what it is and the good Lord has watched over peonies longer than any of us have. I’m not too concerned unless day AND nighttime temps are below 19F degrees for 3-days in a row. Again, the frost is out of the ground and if the ground refreezes, will it go down inches or feet? My guess is inches. If this spring does turn out to be the wackiest ever, I will post updates to these what if’s as the days of spring 2016 continue. In the mean time if you have removed your mulch and take into account my prior sentence on temps, I would leave the peonies alone.

For those of you in USDA Zones 6-8a, see how easy it is to grow your peonies? Would we ever move to a higher zone? Absolutely not! We love change…I think! You enjoy your zones no matter what happens as we look forward to the 2016 peony growing season!

Take Redd’s advice, remove your peony mulch like he instructed us to do!

The first sign of herbaceous peony soldiers appearing!

Ok don’t forget about us Japanese tree peonies! We too like to show off our peony soldier buds!