Getting 2 itoh peonies from the local gardening store

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stevelau1911
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Location: upstate NY zone 6B
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Getting 2 itoh peonies from the local gardening store

Post by stevelau1911 »

I will hardly ever buy plants from the retailers, but I did see that some of their itoh peonies appeared to be exceptional in size and quality. They did have Misaka, and Takara which weren't in my collection yet so after a bit of negotiation, I was able to get 2 of them for $60 a piece when they are listed at a staggering $79.99 each.

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Of course I took all the woody stems on them to make grafted plants using herbaceous roots as an understock. That knife, xenport trimmers, and grafting tape were my only tools.
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Once I got done with them, I basically stuck them into the 12 inch plastic bags with some moist sand to cure on top of a heat mat at around 90F for 4-5 days so the cambium layers can fuse with each other and turn into viable plants in the spring.
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I used the branches with bigger eyes with bigger nurse roots because there is a limit to the amount of energy that can be expended, and the nice big eyes can produce the most growth, drawing more energy, thus requiring a big nurse root like this one which just got grafted.
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I also sawed the main clumps of each itoh peony in half, and all the root pieces that broke off were grafted onto eyes with some cambium tissue attached to make even more plants. Overall, I produced about 60 plants per species if all of the divisions take. The only ones that should be able to flower next year should be the 4 halves on each original itoh which all have plenty of nice fat eyes, each given their own 5 gallon pot. There wasn't even that much soil left in these pots as the tuber mass took up most of it already which is one of the reasons why I would even consider buying them.
Alan_L
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Re: Getting 2 itoh peonies from the local gardening store

Post by Alan_L »

Hope they take Steve -- remember to post updates as soon as you know one way or the other!

Edit: I forgot to say: you should always buy at least some of your plants locally. Support local businesses!
stevelau1911
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Joined: Sun Nov 23, 2008 9:15 pm
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Location: upstate NY zone 6B
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Re: Getting 2 itoh peonies from the local gardening store

Post by stevelau1911 »

I live pretty far away from the place that sells plants locally so I usually only make 2 trips there annually so I probably still buy more plants than most people. I already have lots of plants so I've become pretty picky on what I need to add.

in terms of grafting peonies, some of the tree peonies that were grafted 1-2 weeks ago do seem to be taking pretty well after healing under 90F heat for 4-5 days in a plastic bag with most sand on top of a heat mat. I usually stick about 4-6 of them in a pot depending on their size.

Here are a few of them.
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Notice that the buds are nice and firm which means that the connection between the cambium layers of the nurse root and tree peony scion stock had to have taken. If the graft doesn't heal properly, the buds will simply shrivel up on the scion stock.
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stevelau1911
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Joined: Sun Nov 23, 2008 9:15 pm
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Location: upstate NY zone 6B
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Re: Getting 2 itoh peonies from the local gardening store

Post by stevelau1911 »

In case anyone was interested, this is the type of peony that I typically look for to graft from. I make sure that it is very mature so that there are an excess of branches so that the person wouldn't mind if I cleaned it up, and got some scions. I also try to look for healthy leaves with no apparent fungal infections when I go for a tree peony to graft from. If it's a 1-7 year old plant, I will generally ignore them.

I usually take off about half the buds which will make the remaining flowers get much bigger and grow more vigorous, and will clean out every single dead branch on the plant to encourage more air flow and new growth.

Before
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After: It's also important to prune them out selectively to ensure that the buds that do grow back will fill in to be balanced
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For each species, I will take off all the leaves and only keep the scion materials ready to be grafted onto herbaceous roots in 12 inch zip lock plastic bags with moist paper towels in them. It's important to keep them in a cool environment so you can graft them whenever you want to, and still have viable scion/ nurse root stock.
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If anyone else has tree peonies of their own, or neighbors with them, it is the right time to be grafting tree peonies.
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