IF herbaceous seeds are anything like tree peony seeds, you want to keep seeds moist; drying causes them to go into prolonged (like eternal) dormancy. I would plant them now.

If you're growing herbeceous peonies, it is probably a lot easier to buy the roots, or get them from neighbors because they propagate very easily and are not expensive like tree peonies.

Herbeceous peonies do work the same way as tree peonies so even if they are kind of dried up, if you plant them in a garden bed now, some of them might sprout next spring, but bet on more of them coming up in the spring of 2013. You can rush the process by germinating them in a zip lock bag with vermiculate, once they root well, stick them in a fridge to develop buds, and then carefully taking them out and planting them in the spring to get seedlings to sprout.

I like planting them straight out into the garden beds because that way, I don't risk losing some due to handling since they do have pretty fragile roots.

steve these are just seeds, not rooted peonies yet. & I will put them out into the ground soon. any suggestions on how deep to put them, or just slightly under the dirt like other seeds say to do?

These seeds would work better at 2-3 inches deep because that allows them to be protected from freezes a little bit as well as not get heaved up from the freeze thaw cycle of spring.

thanks steve, that's the kind of info I was looking for. anything else you can add would be great.

NP.

I'm also kind of new to it and just happened to grow them successfully by luck, but since I never gave up on them, my TP seedlings did have a good germination rate after going through a double dormancy naturally in the soil.

Now I just need a source for intersectional peony seeds.

Here is a link that might be useful:

well steve, I got mine from ebay. there's one seller, 7servant7, that has peony seeds cheap. only 50 cents to 99 cents for his seeds. + shipping. just go to the home & garden listing & do a search for peony seeds. he's got blue, green, yellow & pink peony seeds listed. it's worth a try, that's what figured anyway. thanks for the info.

If you got them online, chances are, you do have tree peony seeds since most people don't grow herbeceous peonies from seed due to their ease of propagation.

I have my seeds from all different sources however I try to get them locally whenever I can because fresh seeds are usually much quicker to germinate. I might try a few hundred in some zip lock bags with vermiculate just to see what happens just because I haven't done it before.