Try Velcro for Your Peonies
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- June
- 23
As anyone who grows peonies knows, they flop over and fall to the ground at the first mention of rain or heat or humidity.
In years past, I seem to have been more organized and was able to get my grow-through metal peony rings in place in early May, when my peonies were still a manageable few inches tall.
But for the last couple of years, spring chores got away from me and my peonies were suddenly more than a foot tall. Trying to retrofit the plants through the rings rarely works—too many buds get broken.
Last year I discovered this green gardeners’ velcro tape, which comes in rolls like other tape.
It stays nicely hidden once in place. It’s also great for emergency post-storm repairs to tomato plants.
Here’s a full plant, from above, newly velcro’d.
It’s by no means a perfect solution and the rings work better in the long run, but this stuff is a great last-minute fix. (Also, the rings are really ugly until the peonies are nearly fully grown.)
I’ve also learned that peony blooms look best when cut and brought inside, especially when the plants are really loaded down with blooms.
Here’s a vase on the new screened porch.
This entry was posted
on Saturday, June 23rd, 2007 at 7:59 am by Bill Cary.
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Bill Cary grew up in Louisville, Ky. His gardening was limited to growing parsley and impatiens on the windowsill of Manhattan walkups until the mid-1990s when he bought a rundown old chicken farm on 8 acres in the Hudson Valley. Now he spends his weekends chasing deer, hacking away at invasive shrubs and vines and wondering why he doesn`t have more meadow and less lawn.
peonies so thats what they were. i say were because i dont see them growing any more.
i think mowing them down after the bloomed several times had something to do with it. ;-]