Hello, I'm Roz Chandler from Field Gate Flowers. You are listening to The Cut Flower Podcast. This is for you if you want to learn more about growing your own cut flowers. We'll cover loads of subjects things like setting a patch, your soil, manure and compost, seeds and germination, perennials and biannuals, foliage and so much more. We'll have some exciting guests along the way. Thank you very much for listening.
And today we're going to be talking about peonies. I'm going to put my hand up and say I have a love-hate relationship with peonies. And this is really because they have such a short season. And as a flower farmer, you're obviously most of the time looking for productivity. So you're looking commercially or what you're going to get out of a peony. So if you check all that out of it and thought of it as a beautiful flower, then that would be great. But I suggest that, we did a fireside chat in our Facebook group, the cut flower collective all about peonies and we had some amazing guests that day. So I would suggest you search on that and have a look. And listen to the fireside chat. It was really interesting. We had a guest from the US as well, growing peonies. So perhaps if you catch up with that too. But let's take away the love-hate relationship with peonies. So, let's and also they're a bit like donkeys, aren't they? You might find that a bit weird. But donkeys have long lives and so do peonies.
So if you think of it as a legacy, which actually I quite like now. That actually if you could have a legacy of pennies, that will be really great. So if you take out my personal views about commerciality and then you take out the fact that actually they live for a really long time, let's have a look at peonies. Let's dig in a bit deeper. excuse the pun on that one. So yes, they have a relatively short flower season. But they will offer you more colour, more beauty than a lot of other flowers in your cutting patch. Many people think they're difficult to grow, but actually they're a really low maintenance plant once they get going. There are three types of peony, but I wouldn't worry too much. There's herbaceous types, which die back to the ground level every winter. There are tree peonies, which are taller and more woody and keep their frame throughout the winter. They're really small shrubs and not trees at all, so I'm not really sure why we call them tree peonies. And then as the intersection are hybrids, which are a cross between a tree and herbaceous types. These are not so readily available, so I wouldn't worry too much about them.
So what are the three rules for growing perfect pioneers? I do hate the word rules because actually, I don't think there's any rules in the cutting patch. But anyway, I hope that will help you understand. So the first one and probably the most important one is remember not to plant your peony too deeply. The roots must not be planted more than about two and a half centimetres below the surface. If you plant them any deeper, they may give you loads of wonderful foliage, but no flowers. So that's number one. You wouldn't get any flowers if you plant them too deeply.
Number two, plant your peony in a sunny position. We put ours in the middle of the field so no shade whatsoever. Some varieties will tolerate a little bit of shade. For example Lactoflora, that's the white wings. If your peony is in the shade too much, it really won't grow too well. It won't flower well. So that's rule number two: planting in a sunny position. That reminds me of putting you on the sunny side of the street when you're a child. Gosh, that makes me sound really old.
Rule number three, plant your peony in fertile free draining soil. Peonies are not generally too fussy about the soil but they're quite happy in chalky or clay soils, providing it's free draining. So if you do have clay soil, do mix in lots of manure and compost so that will be more free draining. They do not like to sit in water, particularly in the winter. So you see the rules really only apply to planting your peony. Once planted, your peony will be quite content to be left alone. In fact, if you have rich fertile soil, you probably don't need to feed your peony. But if your soil is not so good a balanced general fertiliser should be applied. It's also a good idea. which is what we did is to cut back and remove the dead leaves in the autumn to avoid peony wilt. So that's really the only thing you have to do. So in all honesty, once you get your planting right, peonies are relatively low maintenance, and reliable, high performance in the garden. So maybe I'm not having such a love-hate relationship. So they're not going to grow fast. They're not going to take over your garden. So they will take a few years to get established. In general, and this really is in general, they don't suffer from pests and disease. So again, actually, quite a nice plant to grow. Deer and rabbits leave them alone. I have no idea why. We have lots of rabbits actually but we're quite well fenced in, but they never really liked the peonies. So it does make it ideal for us to grow peonies.
Whilst we’re talking about the downside to peonies, let's dispel another myth. Peonies don't like being moved. Actually, you can lift your peonies in the autumn and replant them or divide them and then replant them. So actually, you can move them. So the only thing you really need to worry about is planting a peony. So if you follow the three rules, you won't have peonies for a very long time.
So some of our favourites and what I'll be doing is producing a PDF to go with this so you can see the actual images. It's quite difficult to get over what a peony colour looks like on a podcast. Maybe that's the thing of the future. Anyway, let's start. Peony Coral Charm. Now this one flowers in June and odd, it changes its colour as it opens. It starts like that, what would be the word, salmony kind of pink and then gradually opens to orange. So quite different. And then finally goes yellow. I think it's having you on here. It grows nearly a metre tall with really strong stems. So it's a great cut flower. So that's Peony Coral Charm. And if you speak to any cut flower grower, I'm sure they would agree that the Coral Charm is on the top of the list.
Then you've got the peony, Duchess of Kent. Now this is a vigorous Japanese tree peony. And its eventual height will be about 1.2 metres. Now these are ruby I would say two little shaped buds. And it comes in early May. So it comes earlier than coral charm. And it's sort of got roughly kind of blooms. So I would recommend the peony Duchess of Kent if you're looking for something different. Gosh, there's a lot of duchesses in the painting world.
The next one is the Duchess of Marlborough. Now this flowers around mid-season and we would recommend this. It has large pale pink blooms so works really well for us in our wedding market. And also that it's mid-season. Next one Peony Hillary. Not so much a duchess this one. This unique variety produces large and a kind of apricot colour and magenta it's two tone blooms and it hasn't rich spicy fragrance. So I would recommend the Peony Hillary, just for something different.
Next one Peony Laura Desert. I mean, where do they get these names from? This is a fragrant French cultivator. Pale creamy yellow, way more creamy than yellow, pompom centres and ruffled kind of blooms. And again, flowers mid-season and it has a scent which is rather delicious.
Next one, a favourite amongst cutting flower growers, is the pink Hawaiian Coral. Again, because we've got to think what we're using it for, do for weddings. This one comes around late May and it's often used to extend the peony season in a cutting patch. Easy to grow, produces a large amount of coral pink blooms and again grows to about ninety centimetres. So a really tall stem.
The next one, Prairie Moon. This is a herbaceous peony. It doesn't grow so high as some of the other varieties. So it grows to about 75 centimetres in height. But it is white and has single blooms, has a bright yellow centre but in the main you can see the white of the outside, Again, it is an early flowering variety. It comes early in June. So you can plan your peonies through when they're actually going to be flowering but you've got to really know that a peony season is only about four weeks. And there are lots of other varieties that we throw in. The Peony Bot Seller, the Peony Chocolate soldier. That's the darkest red and in the main, darkest red doesn't really work very well as a cut flower. I'm not really sure why. Perhaps the most popular or the one that everybody knows is the Peony Sarah Bernhardt. Bernhardt. This bears enormous double flowers in rose pink. So there you go with a cut flower grower, it's vital to us that A will get high production and B, that we get lots of flowers. This one needs staking. But it does make an excellent cut flower. And there are many more many, many, many more.
So I will probably produce a PDF with about twenty I would think for my recommendation, but I would go back on our fireside chat and have a look and listen to our guests. They were amazing. One is a UK peony grower who ships peonies all over the United Kingdom. One I'd like to say was from the USA, and then Martin Rouse, a lovely gentleman who knows so much about peonies. So I would recommend that you listen to that. So this is my chat about penis and do follow us over at the Cut Flower Collective Facebook group. And we've also got another Facebook group, which is for flower farmers. So it's more about the business of flower farming, and that's called Growth and Profits in your Cut Flower Business. So we have two different Facebook groups and you're more than welcome to join both of them. And thank you very much for listening.
Thank you for listening. This has been the Cut Flower podcast. please do join us on our Facebook group that Cut Flower Collective for lots more hints and tips. Thank you.