Fellow Gardeners,
Please feel free to send me your questions, I am more than happy to help you get the most out of your yard and garden. Sharing what I have learned from my twenty-some years in the horticultural field is my pleasure. Send me your questions regarding gardening, annual flowers, perennials, shrubs, and trees using the form below. Some of the more common and intriguing questions I will post right here.
Sincerely,
I have ants on my peony plants. One plant is blooming but the other looks like the ants are eating the buds before they open and flower. What can I do?
Dear Teresa,
Some varieties of peonies secrete from the buds a small amount of sweet nectar that attracts ants. The ants do not eat the buds, or assist in the flowering of the peony at all. The ants will disappear once the peonies have flowered. No more nectar, no more ants.
Peonies that produce buds but do not flower are probably too young or planted too deep. Most peonies will not flower completely until their third year in the ground. Peonies that are planted more than two inches deep (the root crown should not be more than two inches from the surface of the soil) will not flower well until the root has grown up to that level.
To help your peonies I suggest an application of a standard fertilizer in the spring and fall. Make sure any mulch around the plants is not near the stems of the plants and remove any debris and plant matter once the peonies have died back in the fall.
Peonies are extremely long-lived plants, in some cases blooming and thriving in one place for more than one hundred years. The big beautiful scented blooms are definitely worth waiting the few years it takes to get the plant established.