We need some recommendations for fertilizing our peonies.
Adam here from Parkland Peonies in Calgary, Alberta. We are a small company growing peonies for bare root mail order, and local cut flowers.We are reaching out to the Peony Society in hopes that someone might help recommend a fertilizer blend and or trace minerals for our peony field. We recently did a soil test on our peony field to see where the soil fertility was at. The test came back, with little recommendation on what is required to grow great cut flower peonies and good healthy roots that could be saleable in 2-3 years. Peony growing is not very big in Canada, as Canada is mostly cereal crops. Our field is about 4 acres, we took 4 soil sample from the field, in each quadrant. As you can see it varies a great deal from each sample.
Peonies for root division are in sample area PP-001, and PP-003.
Peonies for cut flower are in sample area PP-002, and PP-004.Our goal for the field is 1. to give the peonies all the nutrients they need to produce strong healthy cut flowers and 2. To feed our root division portion of the business so the plants can produce strong saleable roots within 2-3 years. Currently we do not divide our roots until 3-4 years depending on the variety. We would like to shorten this timeframe.
We hope that someone might be able to help us develop a fertilizing schedule or maybe someone could recommend a company who specializes in this kind of work.
Please find attached our soil sample report.With kind regards, please email us if you think you might be able to help
[email protected]Many Thanks
Adam Yakabuskie
Parkland Peonies
http://www.parklandpeonies.com2 Comments
This is a late reply, I know, but for what it’s worth, the nursery I’m associated with sends foliage to their local agricultural agency, where they grind the leaves up and analyze their constituents , and base their fertilizer recommendations off of those results. So they use plant samples, rather than soil samples. How they know what they want to see in the plant sample results….I’m not sure.
You’ll find that guidelines for peony fertilization vary widely. Surveys sent out to professional peony growers in the Netherland in the 2010’s found that knowledge on this subject is rather limited and based upon previous years of experience. Guidelines from research institutes also have a huge range for all those elements. Next to that how the soil tests are analysed will give different results with sometimes for the same element giving results from high to low. Soil tests are most informative when you use them over time, thus from year to year so that you can see what changes given your fertilizing efforts (it’s important then to use the same lab and same resultls so that comparisons are at least possible). If you do a quick search on google or perhaps in the archives of the American Peony Society Bulletin (as you can do now), you’ll also find many many advices that may differ quite a lot.
Peony season is starting here, so I cannot write too extensively about it, but here are some guidelines. Mention that they are all in kilograms per hectare and USA and Canada use other (to me, used to the metric system, rather difficult) measurements. 100 kg/ha is equal to 89,22 pounds per acre.
(N) Nitrogen needs are probably somewhere around 200 kg/ha/year and advices go as high as 300 kg/ha. This is above what we can legally use in Europe, as the limit here is 150, so that is usually given.
(K) Kalium/Potassium needs are also quite high, more or less the same range as nitrogen.
(P) Phosphorus needs are rather low, with 70-80 kg/ha sufficient.
(Mg) Magnesium some 75 kg/ha
About the other ‘trace’ elements too little is actually known.
Organic matter is advised ‘high’ although I wouldn’t know what that may mean.
One important difference between plants for cutflower production and those for selling as bare roots is that you better NOT give too much nitrogen to the latter late in the season. Otherwise they’ll remain their lush foliage till deep in the Fall and will only start growing underground too late in the season and have worse storage life (they’ll be more prone to rot).
Usually before planting we use mature cattle manure as this releases its elements slowly over the course of about two years, which is ideally for young plants. After the first year we usually give two doses of some organic fertilizer with a total of the amounts mentioned above here. The first dose is given after the plants have started growing, this works for some 3-4 months. Another dose is given after flowering. At least when we have enough time… The kind of fertilizer you’re using is of less importance I think. The image shows a trial with some different slow-release fertilizers at the end of last millenium. It’s in Dutch, but the last vertical column gives the average number of eyes after three growing seasons. The last horizontal line is the ‘control’ with ‘no fertilization at all. Giving 3,7 eyes on average. All other treatments give more or less the same, better, results around 5-6 eyes. Kalkamon-salpeter is Calcium Ammonium Nitrate, all others are local commercial products, they come thirteen a dozen, so there’s no point in advising one except that they better release their ingredients slowly over time. The first column is the addition of some organic matter, thus the first horizontal line is no added extra fertilizer as well, but with extra organic matter, as you can see, even that improves the harvest. We harvest our peonies, depending on variety, after two or three years. It’s always the same varieties that grow better than others. In Holland the standard rotation is two years, but the standard selling size is also 2-3 eyes, not 3-5 eyes which is what I personally prefer and which I think is best for the average retail customer.
If I do find the time after peony season, I might write a longer article on fertilization, but I’m no specialist in this matter. Fortunately there’s every opportunity here for those who know better to react to my mistakes :-)