Increasing Your Peony Plants
Peonies are beautiful flowers that, apparently, happen to be very expensive to buy at the box stores. Typically, I get my flowers for free by digging up starts from relatives and friends (thanks everybody!), but I still like to rummage through the clearance plants at Lowes. I was pretty excited to find a peony that was done blooming and, therefore, banished to the get-rid-quick-table. The picture attached to the plant showed that it was a lovely dark red double peony which means that it’s a full flower similar to a classic rose. I was pumped and ready to toss it into my cart, but the bargain shopper within me froze when I saw the clearance price at $16.49. Confused, I thought to myself, “Yeah, right. That can’t even be the original price!” As I looked closer, sure enough, there was an original sticker on the plant for $32.98. Yikes! Then I saw a white sticker with $5 written in pen on it. “There we go! That’s what I like!” I thought to myself smiley happily. Then I walked to the nearest in charge looking employee and asked her if $5 was truly the price. She said she guessed so which prompted me to asked if they would take the price at the register. She said they should so I asked her name and then gave it to the employee at the register. After a beautiful price override, I walked out with a $33 peony for only $5. But then came the fun part. I’m too much of a bargain shopper to send $5 on one peony plant so I separated it into 6 different plants.
Mom always said that digging peonies was like digging potatoes and, of course, she’s right. You don’t actually need any of the green plant for a peony start, just the roots. I used my shovel and cut the plant into four healthy sections, but one of the sections broke into two pieces. No need to worry with a peony; that just means I have an extra plant! 
So how did I end up with six plants? When you separate the plants, little pieces of the roots will fall off. DON’T COMPOSTTHESE! They can be planted together in their own hole and will leaf out next year. You might not get very many blooms the first year because it’s a small start, but the next year they will be thriving. I will sit back and enjoy my 83 cent peony starts for years to come.
