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When can i cut peonies back


Time Your Pruning to Help Next Year's Blooms

After the first spring bulbs appear, the blooms I look forward to with the most anticipation in the spring are peonies. I love when I finally spot those big flower buds getting ready to burst open and reveal all the frilly petals they’ve been holding in. Knowing when to cut back peonies will ensure those beautiful blooms reappear next spring. Luckily once the flowers die back, you’re left with nice, strong foliage that will provide a backdrop for subsequent blooms.

Peony season, which can be anywhere from April to June, depending on where you live, can be fleeting. Those blooms that bring such colour and personality to the spring garden sure don’t like to hang around for long. But when shopping for peonies at the garden center, you can find early-, mid-, and late-season bloom times. Check the plant tag for details. I have a few peonies and luckily they don’t all open at once. They are staggered about a week or so apart, so I get to enjoy peony flowers for longer.

Peonies are a beautiful addition to a spring garden. Knowing when to cut back peonies—both the flowers and the foliage—will help to maintain a healthy plant (and encourage those blooms!) for the following season.

When to deadhead peonies

Hopefully you get to enjoy the flowers before a spring storm makes a mess of them. I’m often picking up sad-looking, bruised petals after a storm, lamenting the fact that the flowers seem to have just opened. Rain can make quick work of them, turning the petals into a bit of a mushy mess. If you find your peonies flop from their weight (or from a heavy rainfall), try placing a peony hoop over the plant, early in the spring, while it’s still easy to do so.

If your peony blooms don’t make it inside for cut flower arrangements, you can deadhead the faded flowers once they’re past their prime. This step, unfortunately, doesn’t encourage more flowers, like on other annuals and perennials.

It’s also worth noting that allowing the seed heads to form on spent blooms will affect next year’s growth. Deadheading right after the plant blooms allows it to redirect all of its energy into next year’s growth and blooms.

If you don’t snip all your peony flowers for vases, deadheading will help to redirect the energy into the plant for next year’s foliage and flowers, instead of forming seed pods.

To deadhead a peony, use a sharp, clean pair of pruners to snip the flower stems where they meet the leaves. As for the foliage, you’ll want to leave it standing in the garden well into autumn. The rest of this article will explain why you should leave your herbaceous peony foliage until fall.

When to cut back peonies

Throughout the season, your peony leaves may start to look less than stellar. And though it could be tempting to cut them back, the plant relies on the energy from the leaves for the following year’s new growth. That’s why you need to wait until fall to prune them back. Cutting them back sooner could affect next year’s flowers.

Peony foliage is susceptible to fungal diseases, like powdery mildew (shown here). It won’t kill your peony, but it doesn’t look great. This plant was placed in an area that gets part shade. Full sun and lots of air circulation around the plant will help it to thrive—and look better throughout the growing season.

For example, peony foliage can be prone to powdery mildew, which won’t kill the plant, it just looks unsightly. Full sun and lots of space to promote air circulation can help to prevent powdery mildew. Other afflictions can include botrytis blight, verticillium wilt, and Japanese beetles.

Knowing when to cut back peonies in fall is key. Timing-wise, wait until a hard frost has finished off the foliage. (Where I live, that’s usually around October, but some years it’s November.) Until that point, peony leaves are quite lovely in early fall, changing color—usually to a golden hue—like other trees and shrubs.

Using a sharp pair of pruning shears, prune back all the stems right to ground level. Be gentle with the soil around the base of the plant. You want to be careful not to damage the crown at the soil level.

Even when peonies have flopped over, the foliage is still attractive in the garden. Consider plant supports to prevent peonies from falling under their weight or in a heavy rain storm.

Why it’s important to cut back peony plants

On this site, we talk about the reasons why gardeners should save the fall garden cleanup until spring. Peonies, however, are exempt from this rule. They’re one of those plants you should cut back, especially if you have had disease issues throughout the growing season. Cutting back a peony will help to prevent pests and diseases from harming the plant. Be sure that once you’ve pruned everything back, you remove all the plant debris from the area, including any leaves that may have fallen. Discard the trimmings—diseased leaves or insect-ravaged stems—right into the garbage, not the compost pile.

If you live in an especially cold climate, add a light layer of mulch (such as shredded bark or pine needles) at the base of the plant where you cut everything back. Be sure to remove your winter mulch in the spring. If you’re amending the soil around your peony with compost—plants prefer well-draining soil—don’t pile it on the crown, add it around the perimeter.

Pests and diseases, like botrytis (shown here), may be unsightly, but it’s important to leave the peony foliage intact until fall so that the plant can develop its leaves and flowers for the following season.

When to cut back Itoh and tree peonies

Itoh (or intersectional) peonies, which are a cross between the herbaceous peonies mentioned in this article and tree peonies, should follow the same pruning schedule. However in this case, prune the herbaceous part down to the woody party, which you should leave intact.

The best time to prune a tree peony is right after it blooms. Do not cut it back in the fall as you would an herbaceous or Itoh peony. You can do a light pruning in the spring before the shrub blooms. Use clean pruners to remove suckers around the base, as well as any dead wood.

To see how peonies should be cut back and hear about different timing options, check out this video:

More pruning advice

When to Cut Back Irises for Healthier, More Attractive Plants

Bearded irises (Iris germanica) are a star of the late spring garden. Their big floppy blooms come in a huge range of colors, capable of creating a rainbow of hues in the landscape. They are deer- and rabbit-resistant, and many varieties have a lovely but subtle fragrance. Though they are fairly easy to grow, it’s important to know when to cut back irises to maximize both the plant’s health and the appearance of your garden.

Bearded irises come in a broad range of colors. Here are just a few of the ones in my home garden.

Why is knowing when to cut back irises important?

There are three primary reasons to trim back irises:

  1. While bearded irises put on quite the show for two to three weeks every spring, once their blooms fade, the plants look a lot less attractive. You’ll want to trim off the spent flowers to keep the garden looking its best.
  2. In addition to removing the spent flower stalks, disease prevention is another factor that plays into when to cut back irises. There are several common iris diseases that can be reduced or eliminated by proper iris care, including iris pruning.
  3. Lastly, knowing when to cut back irises is critical for preventing a dreaded pest known as the iris borer.

Let’s talk about each of these three reasons in turn and discuss how and when to trim irises to help them achieve peak performance.

When they’re healthy, bearded iris plants are lovely. Unfortunately, they are prone to many foliage diseases which causes brown and/or yellow foliage.

When to cut back iris flower stalks

Deadheading is a daily or weekly task for most gardeners. Removing the spent flowers from some types of plants encourages the development of subsequent blooms. However, this is not the case with bearded irises. The majority of varieties bloom only once in the late spring, and that’s it for the season. Like peonies, even if you deadhead irises, they won’t flower again until the next year. There are a handful of bearded iris cultivars that bloom again in the autumn, but they are not the norm. That being said, you should still trim off spent iris flower stalks to keep the plants looking tidy and prevent botrytis and other diseases. The right time to remove the flower stalks is a few days after all the blooms have faded.

While the flowers are beautiful, the dead flower stalks are not. Cut them off to keep the plants healthy and looking good.

How to deadhead irises

There is no need to remove individual dead flowers as they fade. Instead, trim off the entire flower stalk at the end of bloom. To remove spent flower stalks from bearded iris plants, follow the stem all the way down to the base of the plant where it meets the rhizome (the thick fleshy root-like structure), and trim it off using a sharp pair of pruning shears. Cut the stem at an angle if possible. If you cut it flat, rain and irrigation water collect on the cut surface, which can lead to crown rot. Angled cuts encourage water to run off the side.

To deadhead irises, follow the flower stalk all the way down to the base of the plant and use a sharp pair of shears to trim it off.

When to cut back irises to manage diseases

Unfortunately, bearded irises are prone to several different diseases. Bacterial leaf blight, botrytis, ink spot, soft rot, and leaf spot are among the most common. These diseases leave iris foliage marred with brown spots or streaks. Some cause the rhizomes to turn mushy. And they make the plants look downright ugly. What’s a gardener to do?

Unfortunately, bearded irises are prone to many diseases that turn the foliage brown or yellow. Trim it off regularly to keep the disease from spreading.

Since all of these diseases are encouraged by wet weather or damp, humid conditions, encouraging good air circulation is key to preventing these diseases or, at the very least, lessening their damage. Do not water irises in the evening and use drip irrigation or a soaker hose instead of an overhead sprinkler if possible. The drier the foliage stays, the better. But, since you can’t control Mother Nature, it’s inevitable that the foliage will get wet from time to time.

Immediately remove any iris leaves that show signs of disease (spots, streaks, or blotches) and throw them into the garbage. Cut them off as close to the rhizome as possible. Continue to remove discolored foliage as soon as it appears. I do this two or three times through June and July to keep the plants looking good.

Trim diseased or damaged leaves off at the base of the plant. Dispose of them in the garbage or by burying them to limit further disease transmission.

How to limit iris disease by pruning the plants

In late summer, if the plants are flopping over and looking really disheveled, prune the entire plant back. Use a pair of garden scissors to trim each “fan” of leaves down to half of its height. This improves air circulation around the rhizomes and discourages rhizome rot. Prune each leaf blade at an angle to create a rounded fan shape and prevent rainwater from sitting on the cut surface and causing rot.

In mid summer, when the plants begin to look ratty, cut all the foliage down by half to create “fans” of leaves. Always cut at an angle.

At the end of the growing season, after the leaves have been killed by a few fall frosts, completely remove all foliage. Most of iris diseases overwinter on the leaf debris. Getting rid of the foliage limits the presence of overwintering fungal spores.

Iris fans look much more attractive than brown, half-dead foliage in late summer. Then, when frost strikes, cut all the leaves off completely to keep fungal spores from overwintering.

When to cut back irises to prevent iris borer

Iris borers (Macronoctua onusta) are a species of moth larva that feed on the rhizomes of bearded iris. Their feeding causes iris foliage to turn slimy and yellow. Often there is a putrid smell around the plant (think rotten potato). The female moths lay eggs on iris foliage in late summer. These eggs sit on the foliage all winter long, and then they hatch in spring. The tiny caterpillars burrow into newly emerging leaves and begin to feed inside of them, working their way down to the base of the leaf and into the rhizome. By mid-summer, a single borer can carve out the insides of an entire rhizome, leaving only a stinky, smelly mess behind.

The small hole in this iris leaf was made by an iris borer. The caterpillar is now eating its way down toward the rhizome from inside of the leaf.

Iris borer larvae are chubby and pinkish white. If you divide your iris in the late summer, you’ll often find a few borers in the process. Come August, the borers burrow into the soil to pupate. A few weeks later, the adult moths emerge to breed and lay more eggs.

While you can use beneficial nematodes to control this iris pest, knowing when to cut back irises is a really easy way to prevent more borers. Since the eggs overwinter on the foliage, it’s critical that you cut back irises in the fall. Trim off the leaves all the way back to the rhizomes, and toss them in the trash or bury them. If you come across a soft, rotten rhizome, dig it out and throw it away.

Borers leave behind excrement called frass, along with mushy stems and hollowed-out rhizomes.

One final way to up your iris game

As you can see, there are many reasons why learning when to cut back irises and how to do it properly can improve the health of your plants and the beauty of your garden. Another task to keep your iris plants in good shape is to divide them every few years. This important practice further serves to prevent disease and encourage better blooms. Here’s an article on how to divide iris.

While in bloom, irises are real show-stoppers. Care for the plants properly and you’ll have many seasons of gorgeous blooms.

Learn more about when to prune your irises in this video:

For more on growing beautiful flowering plants, please read the following articles:

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When to cut peonies for the winter: signs and terms

Many flower growers, especially beginners, are concerned about the question of how to properly prepare peonies for wintering, whether they need to be cut, and if so, when and how best to do it. To remove unnecessary worries, we answer in order all questions about pruning peonies of different types.

Despite the fact that peonies almost ceased to occupy your attention by the beginning of autumn, you still need to take care of them before the onset of winter cold if you want to see a lot of lush inflorescences next spring. After all, the root system of plants continues to develop, forming new thin suction roots, peonies accumulate nutrients and lay flower buds for the new season. Care and support during this period they simply need. One of the mandatory procedures in the autumn care of peonies is pruning the stems with leaves.

Why prune peonies

Pruning before wintering is necessary for peonies for several reasons.

Firstly, by the end of summer, the leaves usually show signs of infection with some fungal disease (and sometimes several at once). By this time, pests are firmly established in the flower beds: aphids, ants, thrips, bronzovki, which probably took care of the offspring. All this "property" cannot be left for the winter, so as not to propagate fungal spores and insect larvae throughout the garden.

Secondly, the leaves left under the snow for the entire cold season will rot by spring and can cause gray mold, rust and other diseases to infect the soil and other plants. Therefore, pruning and cleaning from the site of leaves and stems in the fall is the easiest and most reliable way to maintain the health of not only peonies or other perennials, but the entire garden in general.

When to prune peonies

The first pruning is necessary for peonies immediately after the end of flowering - during this period, wilted buds and seed pods are removed so that the plants do not waste energy on seed maturation.

Some inexperienced growers are in a hurry to cut off the aerial part of the bush immediately after flowering, but this is a wrong approach. Peonies need green mass for photosynthesis and continuation of vegetation - it is due to the leaves that the bush is nourished, the root system develops and the stock of substances necessary for wintering is accumulated. In addition, peonies cut too early in warm autumn weather can release young shoots that are guaranteed to die in winter. For these reasons, full pruning should be postponed until a later time.

The timing of autumn pruning depends on the type of flowers growing in your area. Herbaceous peonies in the middle lane should be cut from mid-October to early November - with the onset of the first frost. ITO hybrids can (and even recommended) be pruned later - from mid to late November - because. peonies of this group are considered more resistant to cold and adverse conditions.

When choosing the time to prune herbaceous peonies, it is best to focus on the condition of the stems and leaves - after the stems fall down, it's time to start the procedure.

How to trim peonies

Apart from some differences in terms, in general, the pruning algorithms for herbaceous peonies and ITO hybrids are the same.

The procedure is quite simple: the entire aerial part of the bush is cut off at the very ground, leaving stumps no more than 2-3 cm high. It is better to do the work on a dry, fine day to avoid moisture from rainfall on the sections of the stems, which is fraught with rotting of the root neck.

After pruning, the hemp should be sprinkled with wood ash: two or three handfuls of sifted ash are scattered on each bush - this will help disinfect the cuts and give the plants additional nutrition before wintering.

Pruning tree peonies is not so easy, because it is on the shoots of last year that they develop young growth and buds form. In autumn, you can carry out sanitary cleaning - remove diseased, dry, insect-damaged leaves. Formative pruning, if necessary, is performed every few years, and annually the tops of too long lignified stems are cut off, leaving them 70-90 cm high from the ground. This helps the plants in the new season to enhance the growth of young shoots and stimulates flowering.

Healthy leaves can be composted after pruning. If the bushes have been affected by rust, powdery mildew, rot or insects, then such stems and leaves must be burned or removed from the site so that they do not become a source of infection for the garden.

Caring for peonies after pruning

The stumps of young (up to 3 years old) herbaceous peonies and ITO hybrids remaining after pruning should be insulated with spruce branches for the winter to protect the fragile root system from severe frosts. It is enough to mulch mature plants with compost, humus or lowland peat. The thickness of the layer, depending on the winter weather in the region, is recommended to be 8-10 cm (for a temperate climate) or 20-25 cm (for northern latitudes).

It is not necessary to protect tree peonies from frost - mature bushes can survive temperatures as low as -30°C. However, during thaws, plants of this species may awaken their buds ahead of time, which will lead to their natural death after the return of cold weather. Therefore, experienced flower growers still prefer to cover tree peonies for the winter. To do this, the remaining leaves are removed from the stems, the bush is tied with a rope and covered with burlap or dense white agrotextile, leaving a hole in the lower part for ventilation. As an option, you can make a "hut" from coniferous spruce branches or cover the plants with cardboard boxes.

If you haven't fed peonies in September, it's still not too late to do it at the same time as pruning. For the final feeding, it is recommended to use superphosphate (15-25 g) and potassium sulfate (10-15 g). The earth around the bush is gently loosened and a shallow groove is made in it, where fertilizers are applied. Then the groove is sprinkled with soil and the near-trunk circle is watered. Of the industrial complexes of mineral fertilizers, Fertika Autumn is suitable for this top dressing.

What to do with peonies after flowering - pruning and maintenance

Peonies - plants are quite unpretentious. They grow on almost any soil, easily tolerate transplantation, and bloom beautifully. However, in order for the flowering to be plentiful, the plants need a little help. Moreover, care for peonies should begin immediately after flowering.

Many consider the rose to be the queen of flowers. But, for example, the Chinese call the peony the king of flowers. Peony is not inferior to rose in beauty, and is more fragrant, and less demanding to care for. Although it cannot be left unattended.

Peony has faded: what to do next

The lush flowering of this beauty does not last long - only a few weeks. And what to do with the plant after flowering?

This period is very important for the peony. What and how you do in these few months after flowering will determine the quality of your plant's flowering next year. After all, it is at this time that the bush restores strength and prepares for wintering. Moreover, just during this period, renewal buds are laid in it at the base of the stems, from which new shoots will appear in the spring.

Work after peonies bloom can be divided into several stages. Let's start in order.

Stage 1 - cleaning

After flowering, the whole ground around the peonies is covered with their numerous petals. These remnants of beauty must be removed immediately, because they can become breeding grounds for fungal diseases. It is also necessary to remove all dry inflorescences from the plant.

Step 2 - Watering

Peonies need moist soil to develop flower buds. However, many gardeners immediately stop watering after flowering plants. You should not do this, because. the flower in this case will experience stress, which will lead to the formation of weakened buds. Because of this, next year the peony will not be able to please you with lush flowering. Watering is especially important if there is a dry summer. The amount of water should be reduced gradually. If you poured, for example, 25 liters under a flowering bush, then after flowering, begin to reduce this volume. First, reduce the dose to 15 liters, then to 10 liters, etc. until complete cessation.

Stage 3 - loosening the soil

This simple plant care routine should not be neglected. Heavy rain or watering leads to the formation of a crust on the surface of the soil, and this prevents the access of air deep into the soil. In this case, loosening will help. This will also save the peony from unwanted neighbors - weeds.

To make life easier, the soil around the peony can be mulched. Grass cuts, sawdust, and humus are suitable as mulch.

Stage 4 - feeding

Despite its relative unpretentiousness, peony loves top dressing. The plant needs them both in spring, during the period of active growth, and during flowering. But, perhaps, in the period that follows after flowering, he needs them most of all. How to feed peonies after flowering?

We recommend the first top dressing after flowering with organic fertilizers, such as mullein. Make a circular furrow around the bush. Pour the mullein solution (1:10) into it. Fertilizer will promote the active growth of the root system, the formation of stems and renewal buds.

Another root dressing should be carried out in August. This time we recommend using not organic, but complex mineral fertilizers. Since peonies do not need nitrogen in autumn, use phosphorus-potassium top dressing (30-40 g per plant) and apply it in the same way as mullein - into the groove around the bush. After applying dry fertilizer, the groove must be moistened and covered with earth.

In addition to root, after flowering, it will not be superfluous to carry out one foliar top dressing with microelements. To do this, in dry weather, spray the bush with a solution of trace elements. You can use, for example, liquid mineral fertilizer Agricola (dissolve 5 ml of the drug in 1 liter of water).

Stage 5 - cutting

Inexperienced flower growers rush to prune a peony as soon as its buds have fallen off. Do not do this! Everything has its time.

The process of photosynthesis takes place in the leaves, thanks to which the plant receives the nutrients it needs. Consequently, it is the stems with the leaves located on them that are the source of nutrition in peonies, as in other flowers. If you remove them, you will deprive the bush of these substances. The plant, of course, will not die from this, but you should not expect lush flowering from it.

If you want to cut a bouquet of peonies when the bush is in bloom, take no more than 1/3 of all shoots. Otherwise, along with the flowers, you will take away the leaves from the plant - and with them the components necessary for photosynthesis.

Prune immediately after flowering the peony has only bare inflorescences. They are removed to the first healthy leaf.

If the autumn is warm, a peony cut too early will start to sprout. The first frosts will cause irreparable harm to your bush.

When can peonies be cut after flowering? It is impossible to name the exact time, because. it depends on weather conditions. We recommend focusing on the ambient temperature. After the first frosts, when the stems of peonies "fall down", they need to be cut off. In herbaceous peonies, the entire aerial part is removed. Remove the stems as close to the ground as possible, leaving no more than 2-3 cm.

Some gardeners cover the plants with cut foliage for the winter. We do not recommend doing this, because. stems can become a favorable breeding ground for pests. Cut plants are best collected and taken to a compost pit or burned.

Caring for tree varieties of peonies is somewhat different from caring for herbaceous varieties. Do tree peonies need to be pruned after flowering? Shrub peony species have strong tree-like stems (hence the name of the species). In no case can you cut them, because the flowering of these plants mainly occurs precisely on last year's shoots.

Such bushes need only sanitary pruning, which is best done in the spring. Dry, broken or weak branches should be removed from the peony bush. If necessary, formative pruning can be carried out every few years.

What else to do with peonies in autumn

In addition to the above-mentioned types of work that a peony needs in autumn, one can also name a transplant. If you have a large bush (at least 4-5 years old) or if it grows in an inconvenient place, it is better to transplant it. The best time for this is autumn.

Well, of course, you can't forget about protecting your pets before winter.

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