Here is one of the tree close up. This one is Shima Nishiki. The other is a noid Japanese white.

Sorry, but that looks more like 1 year old grafts to me. Considering that the first 1-2 inches would be the original scion, that means any of the point above it would have grown in the 2013 season.

Perhaps they can say 1 1/2 year old graft because they were taken in the fall of 2012. I do have to admit that their nurse roots are pretty big.

Grafted peonies with 2 seasons of growth should have root hairs coming off. I have read in the cricket hill gardens blog a technique to get them to root faster by taking out a piece of the cambium and ensuring that the graft point is well below the soil line so roots can form.

Willow tea may help too, but I've found that rooting will only occur after the new growth is fairly hardened off by around August.

When I bought them, they specifically said that these are two years grafted plants. These plants purchased locally are a lot bigger than the ones I had previously received from ebay purchases. Assuming that the plants were grafted in 2012 and the first 3 inches are from the original scion, can a tree peony grows 5-6 inches more in one season? These are Japanese tree peonies. Do you think they are that vigorous and grow that fast? I think from the size, they look to be more like two years grafted plants (2 growing seasons). The only fault that I find with them as you pointed out is that perhaps they were not planted deeply enough for the scion to make its own roots. But to achieve such growth in only one season would be incredible. I planted a couple tree peonies in fall 2012 and they showed only 1-2 inches of growth, not 5-6 inches like these. Granted they were Chinese Rockii, not Japanese tree peonies.

It is really misleading how sellers termed the graft age of their peonies, particularly ebay sellers. All of the tree peonies that I purchased on Ebay are most definitely 1 year old graft and yet they described on their sales page their tree peonies as 2-3 years old.

I think the size of the nurse root can make a big difference, and 2-3 year old grafted tree peonies should have root hairs coming off the wood, but not planting deep enough may prevent that.

On my blog, I will definitely post updates on how much newly grafted peonies with varying scion and nurse root amounts will sprout. It is still pretty cold so I'm keeping my tarp on until I think it is safe, but if they grow that much in 1 season, that would be great.

I've found that rooting emerges from callus tissue which is usually close to the graft point on the tree peony scion part, and cutting a bit of wood away would immediately cause callus tissue to form if you are concerned about getting them onto their own root systems.

Here is a link that might be useful: my blog

Steve, I check and read your blog monthly. Basically I am a follower of your blog. Your blog is great.

I tried grafting last fall as you described on your blog and Cricket Hill Gardens. So far one of them took! So excited and thrilled.. I saw a bud eye coming up from the soil when I removed the plastic and mulch. .I have two more that I did but the soil is still frozen on my northern part of the yard where those are planted.

Well done, Kousa! I'm not brave enough to graft yet. That
ð¾s exciting.

Kousa,

That definitely gives me hope that some of mine will take. I grafted all kinds of scion stock and nurse roots. For example my scion stock ranged from half a bud to entire 1ft long branches with nurse roots ranging from not using it at all to 5lb nurse roots. I made as many as I could, but I'm still a newbie at it.

I even tried to graft some fernleaf peonies so I should have some interesting pictures to show on my blog in another 2-3 weeks.

I'm anxious to see if any of them took, but I should be able to have unfrozen soil towards the end of next week. Some of my pots have over 20 grafted plants each, because I was too lazy to just use more pots.

I am excited to read about the results of your experiments with your grafting and seeding projects.

I think that you are right about the size of the nurse root having a huge impact on the growth of the scion. I would be really interested to find out the amount of growth that you get on the 5lb nurse root for one season. Maybe the nursery that I bought the tree peonies from did that, grafting a scion onto a big nurse root and achieving incredible growth on the scion within one season.

Anyway, here is a photo of the eye/bud on my graft of a Joseph Rocks Peony tree that I bought last year. My scion was about 5 inches and the nurse root was a small piece of about 4 inches.

There's snow over my tarps so I won't be able to check my grafted plants until this stuff melts away. I have a huge range of graft sizes so I can't wait to be able to see what takes and what doesn't. It's very possible that some of the larger 1ft long 1 inch thick Chinese tree peony branches with no nurse roots to still sprout roots and take, but my intention is to learn through experimentation for what works, and what doesn't.

Anyways, here's a tree peony seedling going onto it's 4th year which had its main branch taken off for making a graft so cutting off one head does destroy the apical dominance allow many smaller buds to grow.

It's pretty clear that this should recover and come back even stronger this year.

It looks like my grafts are definitely swelling their buds here.

One unfortunate thing is that about half of my already supposively 2 year old tree peonies still on their graft root got destroyed by rodents which is on my other post that I created today perhaps due to not being planted deep enough.
http://stevespeonygarden.blogspot.com/2014/03/removing-tarps-for-good-to-let-give.html

Here is a link that might be useful: Grafts with swelling buds

Yep, those buds look fat and swollen, esp. the one with the big nurse root. THat is awesome to know that you can graft itoh peonies too. Thank you for sharing the results of your work, Steve.

pwin, sorry, I must have missed your post. Thanks. I am excited too. Sometime, desperation can lead to all sorts of endeavors. I was not sure if my Joseph Rocks tree peony purchased last fall would survive (tree had only one root) so I took all sorts of measures to ensure that I get at least one viable plant. Now, I have 3 plants: the main, a division, and a graft.

I just got my flora pena herbaceous fernleaf peony and I'm attempting to take 5 grafts off that one in the spring. I don't know if that's possible especially in the spring with a plant that has already broken dormany, but it's worth a try.

Can you graft herbaceous peony? Herb. peony stem is soft not hard. Would you have more success rooting the stem rather than graft it, you know like dahlia stems? I have read that seeds of tenuifolia peony are viable, but most of them produce single flowered type rather than double even if the seeds come from double type and I think that is what you have.

The grafted pieces I took from this weren't the green foliage. I literally took the dormant buds down below with a bit of cambium, and grafted it tightly to some herbaceous nurse roots, and they are currently curing. I'll let them cure for a week before planting them outside, hoping they will all take so I can get my money's worth from this plant.

It costed me $70 off ebay so having multiple plants would make more sense.

That is really novel. I hope that you succeed. Good luck.

I took them out of their curing bag today to plant later on, and I found that it looks like 3/5 of them have fused. The other 2 don't look viable at all, but getting any to take is a plus.

Now I just need to get them to turn into viable plants.

I got the flora plena fernleaf peony planted up along with the grafted pieces. I hope the grafts will take and this pot will fill out.

How are your grafts going?

It looks like none of the peonies are really doing much with daytime highs not getting much over 50F, but historically, all the peonies should be pretty far along by the beginning of May, even flowering so unless we have really cold temperatures, we should get some progress.

I did only 4 grafts last fall. So far, it looks like 2 grafts took and the buds are firm on the scions. The other one I am not really sure because I have it deeply planted in the soil and nothing has come up yet. One had failed to take.

Your fernleaf grafts look great! That is amazing that you can accomplish this graft especially when they are actively growing. I do not have that kind of confidence to attempt the graft on my Lollipop itoh that you suggested.

I checked on some of my grafts today, and found that a lot of them have failed either due to the nurse root rotting or the graft point failing. I've found that some Rockii Peonies do not take very well while most Chinese tree peonies happen to graft easily perhaps due to a thicker, more robust cambium layer.

On the nurse roots that weren't rotted too much, I was able to save some of them, and re-attach them to a different scion stock to hopefully take with a spring grafting. I'm purposely using species that I know have been taking well.

One issue may have been the extreme cold that froze through the tarp or too much dampness, but I'm looking forward to see what does emerge for me.

So sorry to hear of your losses. I think it was the freezing weather that must have damaged your peonies and caused them to rot. I found that my dahlias suffered the same damage this year.

My grafting ventures may have been hit and miss, but at least my in ground tree peonies that have been growing for 3 seasons look great. Some of them have over a dozen buds, and perhaps flowers on many of them.

As shown, they have clearly broken dormancy now.

That looks great! Do you think that you will get flowers this year?

Most of these should produce flowers aside, especially with this batch of Japanese tree peonies was planted in 2012 as 1 year old grafts. Some of them already flowered last year too.

For example, you can see the bud on this one clearly. One drawback with too many flowers is that it seems to cut down on the amount of foliage that is produced. A lot of them are producing woody stems, unlike the one in the picture above which has appeared to keep dying back and just making sprouts from the ground like a herbaceous peony.

Here's what a first year graft looks like straight after the grafting. I didn't get that many of them to take based on how it looks, but some is better than none.

I don't think any of my grafts take. There is no growths from the buds eventhough the buds are firm. The scion's buds remain closed and tight so I do not know what is happening with them, whether the grafts are dead or alive.

Just to give you some hope, I have had a lot of them like that however they happen to have just started their growth in the last couple of days. If you are also in the northeast, the soil temperature in upstate NY simply hasn't broken 40F until recently so it can be expected that some of them just haven't woken up.

The one in my last picture just happened to come from scion stock that gets activated at lower temperatures.

I've found that success rate seems to depend on the species, along with the quality of the buds, and size/quality of the root stock.