Tree Peony: last chance to tidy them up!

There are times when jobs which "should" have been done in autumn are, for a variety of reasons, not done.

Tidying up the Tree Peony is one of those - I wrote about preliminary tidying back in November, and sure enough, earlier this week I encountered a Tree Peony which had been missed.

Here it is - left - and you can see that the flower buds are already forming: it's going to be dark red, folks!

As usual, I'd been working on it for ten minutes before I remembered to take the "before" photo....

...so I hastily took a snap of the next section.

That's what it looked like beforehand - all the dead brown stalks from last year's leaves, along with the dead brown lumpy bits which were last year's flowers.

So it's off with the gloves, and out with the secateurs, and time to gently and carefully pull or snip away all that dead material.

Why "off with the gloves"?

Because I don't want to damage those burgeoning flower buds, and it's easier to avoid damage without thick gloves on. That's why! 

I will always be wearing gloves when grovelling around in the soil, because of the constant presence of sharp stones, broken glass, and animal poo: but for these "up-in-the-air" jobs, it's fine to do them bare hand. (As long as it's not a freezing cold morning, of course!)

It looks like a horrible mass, but actually it's quite easy to remove the dead material in layers, starting at the top, just under the new leaves and the flower bud. Then I work my way down the stem, snipping off any dead tips: they are grey and lifeless, and the good thing about doing it now - silver linings, and all that - is that it's very, very easy to spot dead parts!

And here we are, most of the dead stuff has been removed, and the plant looks so much better.

Just a couple more lower bits to remove, and we're done.

Having cleared away the dead foliage, I can now look within the plant and spot any dead branches: Tree Peony, especially well-established ones such as the one here,  often have entire upright stems which have died off, but which were invisible amongst the general stems.

So now is a good time to cut them out, now that they are so easy to spot (ie they are bare and grey, with not a leaf, bud, or sign of life to be seen on them). In fact, sometimes they detach themselves at ground level, they are that dead, so it's just a matter of lifting them out from the centre of the bush, without damaging any of the buds.

If they don't pull out, then they can usually be dealt with by just cutting them with secateurs - or with a pruning saw, if they are very stout.

So why is this the "last chance" to tidy them up?

Answer: because the flowers are forming, and the longer you leave it, the more likely that removing the dead material will cause you to inadvertently damage the flower buds.

The whole thing now looks a great deal better: the air can circulate freely, which reduces the possibility of mould, mildew, and other forms of rot: and we can look forward to a fantastic display of flowers, in just a little while!

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