Tree Peony roots at surface of soil

11 years ago

I have had many tree peonies planted for a number of years. Honestly, I don't know exactly which ones they are, but when planting they all appeared to look grafted, and I planted the graft deeply.

After many years I am finding that the thick roots are actually halfway out of the soil now. All of the plants are doing quite well and don't seem any worse for wear. None of them have any herbaceous shoots coming up.

Does it matter that some of the roots are running at the surface of the soil? I'm not sure if here in NH with all of our freezing and thawing they are working themselves up? The soil in the border in question is very rich loam and it was tilled a number of times before planting anything in the bed. Not sure why the roots are not growing down more than straight out.

Is there anything I need to do or since they still seem OK, just let them be? Thanks for any info/suggestions.

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Comments (3)

calistoga_al ca 15 usda 9
11 years ago
I have no experience with soil freezing and thawing, so will skip part of your question. When a plant prefers to grow roots at the surface, it is usually because that is where they grow best. It may be the moisture is more constant there or maybe the amount of air is greater there because of compaction of the soil. Do you practice mulching your soil to maintain moisture and buffer soil temperatures, as well as helping prevent compaction? Al
Thyme2dig NH Zone 5
Original Author
11 years ago
Hi Al, thanks for your thoughts. I was just planting in the bed this afternoon and the soil is not compacted. Moisture seemed quite good throughout. This is one bed that we water fairly frequently when necessary since aside from tree peonies I plant a lot of my "special" plants there. The bed gets more care than most.

I don't mulch this bed much because unfortunately I have many squirrels and chipmunks that really like this bed since it's fairly close to the birdfeeders. There's always a handful digging around the bed. And then I also have turkeys (many of them) that like to frequent the bed as well and they do quite a bit of scratching. So, whenever I've mulched, the animals just trash it and fling it all over the place. Maybe I'll just have to try to mulch deeper and more often to see if that will cause a change in where they're putting their roots.

And you brought up temperature changes, so maybe it is even more important for me to mulch in the fall to help with the temp fluctuations we have up here. Maybe the key is mulch. I'll just have to deal with those critters! I still ask myself why I plant my most expensive, special purchases in there as I watch the squirrels and huge turkeys tromp around! They surprisingly don't do much damage to the physical plants.

Thanks again.
stevelau1911
11 years ago
How many stems does your tree peony have?

If it has lots of stems, or new eyes forming at the base of the woody stems, you could simply dig out the entire plant, get a reciprocating saw and divide the whole clump, and then when you re-plant them, make sure they are planted much deeper so that roots form on the woody sections.

It sounds like you have a pretty old plant so it should still be able to resume its flowering after getting divided. This should be able to re-invigorate your tree peony, and get you a few more plants. Just make sure each division has a few eyes.