Growing Perfect Peonies

The Beet: A Podcast For Plant Lovers

Epic Gardening

Home & Garden, Education, Leisure, How To

4.8 • 1.6K Ratings

🗓️ 16 November 2023

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The peonies on Karen’s farm are selected for their deer-resistance, and pest resistance, making them much easier to cultivate. In this episode, she outlines everything you need to know about peony planting, maintenance, and end-of-season care. Epic Gardening Shop Homepage: https://growepic.co/3ub7VT3 Botanical Interests Shop Homepage: https://growepic.co/3sz8HbN Book Collection Page: https://growepic.co/40uRGMH EG Homesteading Book: https://growepic.co/3QT6OA7 Learn More: 11 Tips For Beautiful Peony Blooms This Season Connect With Karen Gesa: Karen Gesa (pronounced Jessa) is the owner of Midsommar Farm, a part-time 1/2 acre peony farm in northern Virginia. Karen is passionate about spreading the word about this business model as she's found it to be a great income with minimal investment of time, money, space, and know-how. Or, if you're not interested in selling, how to create a private peony cutting garden and fill your home with fresh bouquets all spring. Instagram Facebook Website Karen’s Book Shop the Store As an exclusive for listeners, use code THEBEET for 5% off your entire order on our store, featuring our flagship Birdies Raised Beds. These are the original metal raised beds, lasting up to 5-10x longer than wooden beds, are ethically made in Australia, and have a customizable modular design. Shop now and get 5% off your first order. Get Our Books Looking for a beginner's guide to growing food in small spaces? Kevin’s book, Field Guide to Urban Gardening, explains the core, essential information that you'll need to grow plants, no matter where you live! He also wrote Grow Bag Gardening to provide you with specialized knowledge that can bring you success when growing in fabric pots. Preorder Kevin’s newest book Epic Homesteading if you are looking to turn your home into a thriving homestead! Order signed copies of Kevin’s books, plus more of his favorite titles in our store. More Resources Looking for more information? Follow us: Our Blog YouTube (Including our Epic Homesteading and Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Let's talk about growing peonies start to finish. We have Karen Jessa back on the show,
0:18.0	the owner of Midsummer Farm, Part-time half-acre Peony Farm in Northern Virginia.
0:22.1	So we have talked a lot about them
0:24.2	Karen but technically we haven't gone deep on the actual growing process and we
0:30.7	know a decent amount by this point in the podcast. We know they're perennials. We know they can last 50 years.
0:36.0	We know they take about four years to ramp up.
0:38.0	But maybe we just, let's just give it back down to the basics and talk planting them to start out.
0:43.3	How do we even start?
0:44.8	Yeah, well, the first thing is that they usually come bare root when you order them.
0:50.5	And they've got eyes on them, which are just like little little pink buds and that's what's going to form the stems of the peony plant.
0:57.0	So you want to choose an area that's got full sun at least eight hours of sun and nothing with standing
1:04.8	water or anything that's going to just rot those those roots.
1:08.4	So you want to plant them down but not very deep.
1:13.8	You want it so the eyes are about one to two inches
1:17.2	below the surface of the ground.
1:19.3	If you plant them too deep, then you're
1:20.9	going to get a beautiful plant, but probably very few flowers.
1:24.8	So you want to keep it kind of shallow.
1:27.0	And if you're in a colder climate, you can go a little bit deeper or warmer climate, you can go a little
1:30.5	more shallow.
1:32.0	We're in zone 7A, kind of middle of the road.
1:35.0	But yeah, other than that, that's, you know, we fertilize them twice a year, but really even that's not 100% necessary I mean I've got you know people
	...

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