Chemical free peony grower and world class hybridizer of new peonies.

Good morning Swenson Gardens bloggers! Becky here and thought I would spend some time with you. If you haven’t been following our Facebook page, here is a taste of what I’ve been posting as of late. We’ve received numerous inquires on how to plant bare root peonies. The first step is to identify which way does the root go into the hole? Yes from time to time gardeners have planted their roots upside down thinking the stems come out of the roots. No, the stems come from the eyes. You will notice in my picture the two different types of bare root peonies that we sell. One being a garden peony (from our website those are noted in our Garden Varieties, Distinctive Peonies and Collector’s Peonies pages) and two, the ever popular Intersectional Peonies. The recent orders pertain to USDA Growing Zones 2 – 5, so this post is for you. The eyes should be 1 1/2″ to 2″ BELOW ground level on all garden peonies! You will not see the eyes/crown/last years stems on the garden peonies as they will be under ground level. Make sure in your excavated hole that the roots are placed on a tamped down base in direct relationship to their ground level position i.e. 1 1/2″ to 2″ below ground level. Intersectional peonies are much easier to plant as the red rubber band is your ground level. Just make sure the ROOTS are at the bottom of your hole and the red rubber band is at ground level. More posts forthcoming on moving peonies, digging peonies and dividing peonies. Please be patient as we have been very busy trying to get our first shipment of peonies out! Happy planting bare root peonies!

Most of you will be receiving shipment notifications from USPS Priority Mail on your peony orders. Just a few special instructed orders to ship but the majority were delivered this morning to our local post office. THEY, meaning USPS Priority Mail, say 2-3 day delivery, but we have had excellent success with Priority Mail on averaging 2-3 day delivery. Some will receive tomorrow and others in a few days. For those of you with PO Box addresses, look for your notice and pick up (and plant) as soon as possible. Happy planting peonies!

Ok gardening friends, your peonies are ready to pick up on Saturday, September 5th and 12th from 9 am to 5 PM rain or shine. We will have a canopy set up at the entrance to our processing barn. We can’t wait to see you again! Regarding parking, come all the way north on our driveway past our home and you will be greeted at the information area close to the canopy on where to park. Please do not park anywhere on our driveway or lawn as we will have you park in our sand riding area. If anyone needs special assistance, please let us know at the information area and we will accommodate special parking privileges and any help that you may require. Some of you have been emailing and calling on how soon do you need to plant your new bare root peonies? Our normal response is sooner the better! How soon is soon? We would say within a day or two. Just make sure NOT to leave them in a hot vehicle or any place in direct sunlight. They are packed in sphagnum moss and try to keep in a cool, dark place until you can plant them. It would also be wise to check on them and mist some water on them if they are held in storage before planting. Do not put them in a refrigerator as that is too cold for them now. They need about 6-weeks in the ground in order to develop tiny feeder roots before the ground freezes. So use your best judgement on when to plant them and if not able to in a few days, again, store in a cool, dark place, leave the bag open so condensation does not build up inside the bag and mist lightly if keeping them in storage if longer than a few days. Remember to pick up a bag of our chemical free peony starter fertilizer of which one bag per root is all you need for decades to come. If any questions on how to plant your bare root peonies, experts on hand to help you with that. Now our road before you head north on our driveway is rather bumpy and rocky as they are trying to rebuild it after the mess we had last spring. Finally per our insurance policy I have to share our disclaimer that they require anytime the general public is on our property so bear with me, upon entering our property at 10958 70 th Street SW, Howard Lake, MN 55349, Swenson Gardens, Keith and Becky Swenson, its employees and agents shall not be held liable for any injuries and/or death when visiting our property. You are on our property at your own risk. We ask that you be careful as this is a working farm including equipment, livestock, electric fences and a pond. Please keep any children under direct adult supervision at all times. It is ok to look at the animals but be aware that all our fences are electric. We want all of you to have a safe and enjoyable time will you visit our property! Thank you and thank you for letting us grow these amazing peonies for you! Have a safe trip out here and be sure to check out some apple orchards like Fall Harvest in Delano, Carlsons Orchard in Winsted and stop in at Cattail Corners in Howard Lake for some fall color and natural pet supplies. See you tomorrow or on Saturday, September 12th during peony pickup days.

The leftover and wholesale peonies are ready for their new home! All pick up and ship orders are done so please help us reduce the amount of peonies we have to plant back this fall by taking a few extra home with you! For those of you who are new to our peony barn sale, it happens on Saturday September 5th and 12th from 9 am to 5 PM rain or shine. Our processing barn is set up in a retail and wholesale area. For those of you who ordered retail roots from us and are picking up, you and any friends/family that you bring along will also receive 10% off for any additional roots that may find there way into your heart and pocketbook. Cash and check only! No credit cards during this sale. Our address again is 10958 70th St SW, Howard Lake, MN. See you tomorrow or on the 12th at the Swenson Gardens Peony Barn Sale!

The peony compost team and our son have all been busy preparing our chemical free peony starter fertilizer that will be for sale when you pick up your orders or when visiting our peony barn sale. We can’t use the word ‘o_r_g_a_n_i_c’ so thus the chemical free phrase is ok. All ingredients are chemical free including the composted cow manure that we let set over one winter, no grain or corn is fed to our cattle and all our pasture and hay has never been sprayed with chemicals. It always concerns me when buying a bag of composted cow manure when you really don’t know where it has come from and what chemicals, antibiotics and feed is included. The reason why we let our compost winter one season is to make sure any weed seeds are killed by the low winter temps and the high summer temps as it is decomposing. The bag he is selling contains enough nutrients for years to come. He sells it for $3.00 a bag and each bag is enough for one root. He would be glad to talk with you about the ingredients he uses except for the ‘secret’ ingredient that have have literally GROWN to love in some of our test fields. Oh by the way, this will also help his college fund. Not sure why this is his favorite time on our peony farm?

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!

Thankfully the power on our peony farm is all good! The digging crew is done as of yesterday afternoon. 11-days of digging for our first ship and only pick up time is now over. Whew and congrats to Danny and his digging crew. The final roots were processed this morning and all are in the cooler awaiting picking and packing. Danny now has a window to harvest his 750+ seed crosses that were made back in bloom time. The peony processing barn gets a makeover into the picking and packing area which then becomes the peony barn sale area. Becky and her crew are hard at work with this makeover as this step requires the greatest concentration, double checking, triple checking to make sure all the orders are picked as noted.  Since the shipping orders will be picked and packed tomorrow or Friday, our plans as of now are to ship out on Tuesday, September 8th (happy anniversary dear) so that the orders will not be sitting in a warehouse on Monday for those who would receive on Tuesday. We ship USPS Priority mail which means most of you should receive your orders next week. USPS says 2-3 day ship but they can’t guarantee that. So life on the peony farm continues all its interesting twists like taking our daughter to urgent care on Sunday from an allergic reaction to a bug bite and taking her horse Daisy to the vet on Monday and kept overnight for observation. Oh yes and son just got back from his MN State Fair 4H events with a blue and purple ribbon. For those of you picking up your peony orders on 9/5 and 9/12, we look forward to seeing you.

Things are never dull on our peony farm. The digging crew continues their quest to dig all the peonies for our first ship before the hot and muggy weather sets in early next week. Rumor has it that the crew may complete this quest tomorrow or Sunday at the latest. That same sentiment echos throughout the process as the washers, dividers and finish processors also stepped up to that quest. As I mentioned in an earlier post, our goal is to get them into the cooler as quickly as possible. Things were going alone very well until a huge boom and glass came flying out of our outside spotlights on our processing barn. Silence then set upon our property as the coolers went quiet, water stopped flowing out of the hoses and no sound out of the speakers from our favorite radio station. Thankfully Cara was not hurt from the falling glass fixtures and no one at that time was holding anything that was electrical. Danny called as he was heading down the driveway to let us know that one of our power lines was on the ground. YIKES! A call into our electric coop ensued and at least for us, many prayers were ushered up thanking our Great Lord that Cara and others were not hurt and a quick response to repair the line so the coolers could get back online. When the linesmen arrived the cause of this accident was a truck and trailer that was carrying a corn crib ripped off the lines hanging over the road on 70th Street. Needless to say these hoodlums continued on there merry way down 70th Street and broke other power lines that fed into various farms. The linesmen were not happy and are currently looking for these hoodlums. So after a 3 hour siesta, all crews resumed their now faster pace knowing that all parts to this process are working normally. The only residual damage to the power surge are a couple broken out light fixtures (that weren’t even turned on) and the electric fence charger that was also fried in the cattle barn. According to the linemen, this was a minor surge after the power line was cut. We are very thankful though that all members of our crew were safe and life on the peony farm continues for another day!

Guess this is what happens after six days of digging peonies! Not sure if the added cattails and mud items are used to line up the New Holland tractor for digging up the peonies…whatever works is ok by me! Seriously though, Danny and his crew are doing a great job and are 70% done with the first dig. Our goal at Swenson Gardens is to dig, divide, process and pack as quickly as possible so we can store in one of our coolers until they are picked up or shipped. Every order is freshly dug so that you may receive the healthiest roots possible. With rain forecasted for tomorrow, the crew is on a fast pace as digging in the rain is no fun. Now singing in the rain is great, so digging and singing in the rain for peonies is the BEST! Right peony digging crew?

Yes peony gardening friends the PEONY BARN SALE is on! Mark your calendars, fill up the vehicles with friends and family and visit us on Saturday, September 5th and Saturday, September 12th from 9 am to 5 PM. Left over retail roots and the wholesale bag roots will be set up in our processing barn for your viewing…and buying pleasure! First come first served and once they are gone…they are gone to their new homes! CASH AND CHECK sales only! NO CREDIT CARDS ACCEPTED DURING THIS SALE! As usual, do not call us to save any roots for you as we don’t know yet what will be available. If you want a specific root, please order online or mail order as this peony barn sale gets pretty crazy at times!