Peonies: transplant time. Video
Beautiful, luxurious garden flowers often grow in such a way that the bushes begin to interfere with other plants. Peonies have to be transplanted, but often they die due to wrong actions.
Ideally, the bushes should be transplanted in early September, when the rhizome begins to actively sprout – when transplanted, they will become the key to good survival of the bush in a new place.
But, if it did not work out to dig a bush in the fall, gardeners transplant the plants in early spring, when the ground is still full of moisture, and the bushes are just coming out of wintering. You just need to wait for the first green branch to appear. Gardeners know that the first sprouts of peonies are bright red, as soon as they begin to form into a green branch, it is time to “move”. But why waste the perfect time? We act!
Transplanting peonies does not begin with digging out a bush, but with preparing a site for future planting. The fact is that the flower does not like unstable soil, so a hole must be made for it in advance. A couple of weeks before digging, you need to form large holes under the bushes and pour small pebbles or coarse sand into each. From above, into a hole half a meter deep, you need to pour half a bucket of a mixture of sand and turf. This filling can be replaced with the following composition:
a glass of bone meal;
humus and peat in equal proportions;
a glass of ash;
50 grams of superphosphate.
In each hole, regardless of the natural moisture content of the soil, you need to pour a bucket of water and leave it for a week to shrink the mixture.
The transplanted plant needs to be covered with spruce branches, it will save the peony from frost on the soil, which can happen in spring and early autumn.
In the fall, the plant needs to be tied up and cut off the leaf, leaving no more than 10 centimeters of the stem. Dig up the soil around the bush and shed plenty of water. And you can only dig out the next day.
There is one more subtlety: you need to dig out the plant with a pitchfork, because the shovel often crushes the rhizome strongly, and the flower is sick for a long time. With an autumn transplant, the root of the flower must be cleaned of the earth, and sometimes – with high acidity of the soil – even rinsed in a weak solution of potassium permanganate. It is impossible to clean the soil in the spring, on the contrary, the lump around the root should be as large as possible.
Place the rhizome of the peony in the prepared hole in the center, this will allow the young roots to expand faster and begin to feed the plant. From above you need to water the peony and only then sprinkle it with earth so that a noticeable hole remains, in which water will accumulate at first.
It is important to remember that plant buds should not go more than 5-7 centimeters underground, otherwise they can rot.
And keep in mind: the first month the plant will be sick. At this time, the peony needs regular watering and loosening of the soil to provide air access to the roots. As soon as the leaves begin to gain strength, the peonies need to be piled up, and with abundant leaf growth, tied up.
Important!
It must be remembered that not every neighborhood is suitable for peonies in a flower bed. They are even considered “evil” flowers – nothing grows next to them. Firstly, you need to plant other flowers no closer than 20 centimeters from the bush, so as not to obscure the peony. Secondly, for the sake of beauty, it is worth choosing plants with smaller inflorescences than those of a peony. Thirdly, neighboring flowers should not grow between peony bushes – it is better to frame the flower bed with them. And another rule: one flower bed – one variety of peonies.
And about how best to equip a flower bed for peonies, read HERE.
By the way
If you just now have time for gardening, then you can still have time to enjoy the autumn flowers. The main thing is to know what to plant and how to do it. What annuals and perennials to plant now is the time, read the LINK.
And some crops are good to sow in winter. They will perfectly survive the frost under the snow, and in the spring you will have an early harvest. What useful and tasty perennials themselves ask for in winter – read HERE.