How to: Tidy up your ordinary Peonies in Autumn!

Just the other day, I wrote about how to tidy up Tree Peonies at this time of year, ie autumn, and I've received several pleas for some guidance on what to do with "normal" Peonies!  This refers to what  you might call the "usual" Peonies, the herbaceous ones.

"Normal" Peonies are much easier to deal with : as they are herbaceous, they die down every winter, and pop up again in spring.

So all we have to do is remove the dead upper foliage, because otherwise it may rot, and infect the roots with mildew or other types of rot: also, if you leave soggy dead foliage lying around on the garden, it encourages the dustmen of the garden, ie the slugs and snails, and goodness knows we don't need to encourage them!

OK, here we go:

Here we have your average herbaceous Peony, in late autumn, looking a right mess. (That's a technical term.)

As you can see from my yellow bucket, I have already started working on this one - yes, once again, I forgot to take the "before" picture, before actually beginning.....

First job, literally and simply, cut off every dead brown stem, leaving just a couple of inches.

Why leave a couple of inches? To help you to avoid treading on it.... more of that in a moment.

Having cut off the dead stems, you are then able to get in amongst those cut stems, to gently remove any weeds which have been sheltering under the dying foliage.
 

Here is the same clump, from the same position, now it is half done: there are a couple more small weeds to be dealt with, and the rest of the brown stems.

Note that grey leaf, lying on the soil to the bottom right of the photo - now look at the "mostly before" picture above: yes! It's the same clump!

Once you have done those two tasks - cut down dead stems, remove weeds - you can look more closely at what is left.

In amongst the freshly-cut dead stems, you will find the dead cut stems from the previous years. Assuming that your gardener did a proper job last year, that is! *laughs* 

Those stems should now just pull straight out of the ground, with a gentle tug. 

There we go - same plant, same grey leaf, but now all the battered old stems from last year have been cleared away,  so we are finished working on this plant.

In many gardens, the new buds are already starting to show, and that's why I like to leave a couple of inches of stems: otherwise it is fatally easy to accidentally tread on them, damaging those fat new buds.

Which would be bad.

All the dead stems, and the weeds, can go on the compost heap (unless the weeds are perennial thugs, of course), and there you go, that's one job done for the winter.

Oh, there is a bit of a debate about whether to mulch over them for the winter, or not. I prefer not to: Peonies are famous for not flowering if they are buried too deeply, and I believe that if you pour a thick layer of mulch over then, then you are in danger of - in effect - burying them. Too deeply.

The other possible reason for mulching Peonies, often repeated on the internet, is for frost protection, for the roots, and/or those new buds. In my experience - which is approaching 20 years now, blimey! - they simply don't need it. I have yet to see a Peony suffering from frost damage. As always, a disclaimer: if you live in the far north, where you get bitter frosts: or if your garden is in a real frost-pocket, and suffers harder frosts than "normal",  well, in those situations, you will probably already know all about frost protection for your plants. 

 But certainly, down here in sunny (?) Oxfordshire, Peonies don't seem to need it!

 

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