Planted three new peonies last fall that arrived with beautiful huge root stock. We prepared the planting site carefully and wha-la! this spring all three peonies appeared with good growth and even buds.

Well . . .

I asked Dear Husband if he would use Roundup to spray here 'n there around our garden and fence line. About a week later I noticed two of the peonies had leaf stems that were bent over and leaves that were a little curled and spotted. I called Don Hollingsworth and he asked me to send pictures. Meanwhile I asked Dear Husband to take the damaged leaves to our local garden center and ask the expert there if he could identify the problem. He immediately said, "weed killer spray drift". I talked to Don Hollingsworth and he said it didn't look like a disease and thought the spray drift answer was right.

Has anyone here had a similar problem? Yesterday I sadly sacrificed the only buds on our Coral Sunset to help the plant come through this. Amazingly the second peony, Bernice Carr now seems to be alright. It just stopped all growth for a couple of weeks; seemed to shrug off the incident and now its buds are increasing in size. I can't tell you what a relief this was to see! Mr. Hollingsworth said Bernice Carr is a big, tough plant and will probably pull through. The Coral Sunset peony doesn't have any further leaf damage, but I'm still worried about it. Maybe disbudding it will help.

Any of you had a similar experience? Will you write back and let me know what happened?