Peonies need to be transplanted, but often they die due to improper actions.
Ideally, peony bushes should be transplanted at the beginning of September, when the rhizome begins to actively produce shoots – when transplanted, they will be a guarantee of good survival of the bush in a new place. But, if it was not possible to dig up the bush in the fall, gardeners transplant the plants in the spring, when the ground is still full of moisture, and the bushes are just coming out of hibernation. You just have to wait for the first green branch to appear. Gardeners know that the first sprouts of peonies are bright red, as soon as they begin to form a green branch – it’s time to “transplant”.
Two weeks for preparation
Transplanting peonies does not begin with digging up the bush, but with preparing the place for future planting. The fact is that the flower does not like unstable soil, so a hole for it must be made in advance. A few weeks before digging, you need to form large pits under the bushes and fill each with small pebbles or coarse sand. Half a bucket of a mixture of sand and sod land should be poured from above into a hole half a meter deep. This filling can be replaced with the following composition:
- a glass of bone meal;
- humus and peat in equal parts;
- a glass of ash;
- 50 grams of superphosphate.
A bucket of water should be poured into each hole, regardless of the soil’s natural humidity, and left for a week for the mixture to shrink. By the way, the transplanted plant should be covered with a lapnik, it will protect the peony from frost on the soil, which can happen in spring and early autumn.
How to do it correctly
Тhe plant must be tied and the leaf cut, leaving no more than 10 centimeters of the stem. Dig up the soil around the bush and water it abundantly. And you can dig up only the next day.
There is another subtlety here: you need to dig up the plant with a pitchfork, because the shovel often crushes the rhizome badly, and the flower gets sick for a long time. When transplanting in autumn, the root of the flower must be cleaned from the ground, and sometimes – with high acidity of the soil – even washed in a weak solution of potassium permanganate. In the spring, you cannot clean the ground, on the contrary, the lump around the root should be as large as possible.
The rhizome of the peony is placed in the prepared pit in the center, this will allow the young roots to straighten up faster and start nurturing the plant. The peony needs to be watered from above and only then sprinkled with earth so that a noticeable hole remains, in which water will accumulate for the first time.
It is important to remember that the buds of the plant should not go underground for more than 5-7 centimeters, otherwise they may rot.
And consider: the first month the plant will be sick. At this time, the peony needs regular watering and loosening of the soil to ensure air access to the roots. As soon as the leaves begin to gain strength, the peonies should be rolled up, and with abundant leaf growth, tied up.
