Mario Bautista
As summer fades into fall, there’s another late-season gardening task to add to your list: dividing and moving peonies. You can move them for a number of reasons, but perhaps the biggest is that they didn’t bloom as well as in years past.
This is most likely due to too the peonies getting too much shade. Because peonies can last for decades, the trees around them may have grown and now block out full sun — which the peonies need to thrive and blossom.
If this seems like your situation, you can divide and move the plants to a sunnier spot. Begin by digging up the whole plant and checking its root system. Knock off the soil and notice the mother plant and all of the smaller plants attached.
Begin by teasing them out with your hands or cutting them with a knife. If you have a big peony plant, divide it into two or three smaller ones for replanting.
Next, you’ll want to find an ideal location for the peonies. Knowing they need well-drained soil is key, but it’s also best to consider the sun situation. Start by looking around your yard and checking out the trees. How tall will those trees be in the next five to 10 years? Will they block out sun for your peony plants? Essentially, finding the sunniest spot with the best soil is the goal.
Another key step when dividing and moving your peonies is to plant in native soil, without adding in any compost. Added compost can settle too much and affect the plant’s crown and roots, which could also mean fewer blooms. When replanting, ensure that the crown always stays 1 to 2 inches below the soil line and keep it well watered.
Any of the larger peony plants that you have moved will likely begin reblooming right away next year. Smaller plants may take a year or two to bloom again.
Lilac issues continue to concern gardeners
Q: The lilac bushes in my yard and around the neighborhood all seem to have lost their leaves over the last few weeks. The leaves first turned brown and by now nearly all of them have fallen off. Most bushes are completely bare while some have just a few sad looking leaves still hanging on. I don’t recall this happening before that. Is my memory failing and this happens routinely or is this related to specific conditions the past few years? Will, in Colchester
A: Lilacs are such beloved plants. And this summer, when the leaves on some Vermonters’ lilac bushes began to look scorched or burned and began to yellow, curl and fall off, many home gardeners were concerned.
The effect is due to a number of fungal diseases that thrive in wet weather. In the interim, if you can clean up any lilac leaves that have dropped, that will help the plant and the soil around it from harboring the fungal diseases.
The bigger question on people’s mind is whether these fungal diseases permanently damaged their beloved lilacs.
Most likely, those diseases did not kill the lilacs. But it is a good idea to check the lilacs’ overall health. A simple way to check is to look at the branches. If the branches have a terminal bud at the end that is still green, healthy and alive, then your lilac is fine and will bounce back next year.
If you’re not seeing a terminal bud on the end of those branches, then go one step further to check. With a hand pruner, clip a branch and look inside. If the inside of the lilac branch is green, then you needn’t be overly concerned.
Add some compost of bark mulch around the lilac bush and watch it flourish again next year.
How to boost soil nutrients by giving it a year off
Q: My wife and I are going to take a year off from our vegetable garden next season. It’s a small plot about 25’ X 35’. I’m curious what I should do with it for it’s year of fallow. Plant a ground cover like alfalfa or rye, or cover it up with plastic and forget about it? – John, in Essex
A: This is an opportunity to really build up your soil for a whole year. And you could do that in a number of ways.
One method is to try successive cover crops next year. Beginning in the spring, start out by sowing buckwheat into those beds and let the buckwheat grow up. It only takes 30 or 40 days for it to get to a flowering stage. The pollinators love the flowers, too. Then, once the flowering is done, but before it sets seeds, chop it all down.
Leave what you have chopped as a mulch on top of the garden bed. After a couple weeks, the chopped debris will break down enough where you can sow your second cover crop.
In mid-summer or even into August, sow the next crop which could be a mix of oats and field peas. Let those grow up. The oats and peas will both die back naturally in the winter from cold temperatures.
Then, the following spring in 2026, you’ll have good and rich soil that you can top with compost and start up your vegetable garden again!
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