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Sep. 14th, 2008 04:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickAnyone who clings to the notion of gardening as something that is done by ladies in afternoon dresses and big floppy hats: You should have come to my yard to help move three peony bushes. (I was going to move six but ninety degrees with similar humidity rather quashed that plan.) Due to extensive rains of late, the ground was soft and wet and heavy. It was easy to dig but not particularly easy to carry.
Peonies are kind of like iceburgs. Most of the stuff is what you can't see. So, if you go to dig up the thing by making a reasonable shovel perimeter (the usual first step), you will find that you've sliced through half the roots. If you make a proper sized digging to accomodate the roots, then you will have trouble (a) digging a big enough NEW hole to put the damn thing in and (b) carrying it from where it is to where it is going.
I had to move some peonies today because I got the two rose bushes I'd ordered a while back for fall planting. Apparently it's now fall because the roses arrived in the mail on Thursday past. (I've been busy, pony things.) The two bushes I ordered were nonremontant old roses, a centifolia named Fantin Latour and the damask Ispahan. Both of these roses bloom once, are some flavor of pink, smell nice, don't get diseases easily, and get taller than the deer browse line, with Ispahan getting pretty much as big as you let it. In order to plunk the roses in the ground, I needed to shift the peonies to a new location in the yard. I also had to move two pre-existing roses (one of the rugosas and Banshee) to the mow-around ghetto because they were invading other plants with underground root sprouts. Banshee, in particular, suckers like a damn demon. It's pretty. It's healthy. It smells *exactly* like roses. It has many good points, but unless you want it all through everything, plant it somewhere that you can mow around it to keep the suckers down.
The two rose bushes, I pruned back *hard* (they're vigorous growers) and dug up and replanted. That wasn't terrible. It was work, but it wasn't the end of the world. Roses have a sensible amount of root. Then I started on the peonies. Peonies do not have a sensible amount of root. It was during the digging of the peonies that the last vestiges of my romantic vision of gardening bit thedustmud.
I'd tell you what kind of peonies they were, but I can't. While my roses mostly have names, my peonies do not. Some of them were free (dug up out of the back of 403 when we sold it -- that's the titty pink one) and some of them were end-of-the-year WalMart cheapo peony root bits in bags that I didn't really expect to grow. They were Two for Five Dollars, the WalMart ones. Each of my WalMart peony bushes makes approximately forty flowers a year, but I've had 'em a while. At the outset, they made three stems and one flower. To get forty-flower peonies, just add patience. Ten or twelve years ought to do it. This year, I gave two of the WalMart peony bushes (I had four pinks and a white) to the wife of brother-the-younger on the grounds that she wanted 'em, I needed the space, and if I got busy with a hacksaw, I could make my two into probably eight in the unlikely event that I needed more peonies later in life.
Anyway, no matter what kind of peonies they are, they have huge fucking roots and the root balls weigh like a ton. Schlepping them around is not ladylike or genteel. Today, in unseasonable heat and humidity, it was muddy and sweaty and a lot like work. Ick.
Peonies are kind of like iceburgs. Most of the stuff is what you can't see. So, if you go to dig up the thing by making a reasonable shovel perimeter (the usual first step), you will find that you've sliced through half the roots. If you make a proper sized digging to accomodate the roots, then you will have trouble (a) digging a big enough NEW hole to put the damn thing in and (b) carrying it from where it is to where it is going.
I had to move some peonies today because I got the two rose bushes I'd ordered a while back for fall planting. Apparently it's now fall because the roses arrived in the mail on Thursday past. (I've been busy, pony things.) The two bushes I ordered were nonremontant old roses, a centifolia named Fantin Latour and the damask Ispahan. Both of these roses bloom once, are some flavor of pink, smell nice, don't get diseases easily, and get taller than the deer browse line, with Ispahan getting pretty much as big as you let it. In order to plunk the roses in the ground, I needed to shift the peonies to a new location in the yard. I also had to move two pre-existing roses (one of the rugosas and Banshee) to the mow-around ghetto because they were invading other plants with underground root sprouts. Banshee, in particular, suckers like a damn demon. It's pretty. It's healthy. It smells *exactly* like roses. It has many good points, but unless you want it all through everything, plant it somewhere that you can mow around it to keep the suckers down.
The two rose bushes, I pruned back *hard* (they're vigorous growers) and dug up and replanted. That wasn't terrible. It was work, but it wasn't the end of the world. Roses have a sensible amount of root. Then I started on the peonies. Peonies do not have a sensible amount of root. It was during the digging of the peonies that the last vestiges of my romantic vision of gardening bit the
I'd tell you what kind of peonies they were, but I can't. While my roses mostly have names, my peonies do not. Some of them were free (dug up out of the back of 403 when we sold it -- that's the titty pink one) and some of them were end-of-the-year WalMart cheapo peony root bits in bags that I didn't really expect to grow. They were Two for Five Dollars, the WalMart ones. Each of my WalMart peony bushes makes approximately forty flowers a year, but I've had 'em a while. At the outset, they made three stems and one flower. To get forty-flower peonies, just add patience. Ten or twelve years ought to do it. This year, I gave two of the WalMart peony bushes (I had four pinks and a white) to the wife of brother-the-younger on the grounds that she wanted 'em, I needed the space, and if I got busy with a hacksaw, I could make my two into probably eight in the unlikely event that I needed more peonies later in life.
Anyway, no matter what kind of peonies they are, they have huge fucking roots and the root balls weigh like a ton. Schlepping them around is not ladylike or genteel. Today, in unseasonable heat and humidity, it was muddy and sweaty and a lot like work. Ick.
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Date: 2008-09-15 03:27 am (UTC)no subject
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