There's just something that about peonies,
you know, those plants and
just big and beautiful blooms.
They come in late May,
early June and Master Gardener
Cisco Morris joins me now.
Peonies are one of your favorites,
right? I love
peonies for one reason. They're one
of the only perennials we could grow.
And whisk cheese can where I grew up
and that also known as Wisconsin.
Yeah, yeah. You know, it's only what
it could take. The cold.
These you you can't kill them.
So what I think is powerful,
ladies and gentlemen,
is that the word on the street is
it's this flower that's responsible
for making this man a gardener.
That thank you. It's a
famous story.
I live next door to the woman who
was the Wisconsin champ for a Peony.
She got the blue ribbon every
year at the State Fair.
I was a great Little League player.
I went over 2 days when I was 10
years old before the State Fair
and hit every bud for a home run.
Oh my God, I cannot even.
I had to work with her all summer and
just seeing the way she looked at me,
I know there's some valuable about plants.
That is how you learn. That's how I learned.
And that was my first lesson
in gardening right there.
Boy, I had some good hips though.
You better watch it, because now
you have a garden full of them and
you don't want that repeated looking
shot. Know, if I catch anybody near
these plants, they're in big trouble.
That's Buckeye belt. Is that?
That's what her bases P That's the best
herbaceous peenie there is on Earth.
I love it. But look at see what happened.
It flopped over. It flopped.
So that's a big problem and you don't
want that because doesn't look good.
That's Parts Teller right there,
which is that's an eto Peony sort of
cross between a herbaceous and a tree
Peony get really big flowers, you know,
so beautiful. OK, so there's a lot
of things we can do to learn how
to take care of them. First of all,
trick to making sure they bloom well.
Okay. You don't want to crowd them.
Don't crowd. If you crowd them,
then what happens is they just they
don't tend to bloom well and also
you don't want to plant up too deep.
People plant. You want those buds
right at the soil surface and then
the magic ingredient right there,
that alfalfa meal or La La.
They just feast on that
stuff. Alpha meal, that's.
You never told us about this before.
This this makes. Yeah, I talked
about this, this any plant that
kind of likes alkaline soil.
If you add that around the plant,
it makes it on top of the soil.
Yeah, you work it in OK to the soil.
And I always add a little organic fertilizer,
you know, flower food. OK.
Anything with the 4/4.
Yeah, four floors. Great.
And you know the, that was pretty
good that this stuff makes.
You can hear the Dow.
You start to cheer when
you put that on there.
It's like me when I see a Brussels
sprout casserole just out of control.
I mean, who doesn't feel that way when
they see a Brussels smelt bathroom?
Yay. Alright. How do you keep them
from flopping 'cause you mentioned
they flop and they're very heavy.
Like these are very heavy. Ohh yeah,
these flowers are so heavy.
So this is one of my
favourite tools right here.
It's called the Y stick.
You make them?
No I you could buy these.
Looks like a dividing Ron. Hold on.
Let me see if there's water.
Oh, I found a Cisco. OK.
So you stick these in the ground
and then you can bend these any way you want.
Oh. So then you know you stick them
in and you you just make sure that
you know it it's supporting. Oh and
it just holds it up.
You don't have to stick it. OK.
Right. And so I use these if all
of a sudden I noticed things are
starting to flop I quick grab these
you could put like floor around it.
OK. Of these war.
You can just grow it through one of these
things. So you put that. OK.
So you put this in the ground.
Almost like a table. Yeah.
Yep. Before. Before that.
The Peony starts to grow. OK.
And then it grows up through there.
And do you see this or does it
grow around it? Grows around it.
You don't even see this.
It's pretty cool. You hope you don't.
And there's one thing you know, it's got
these things you gotta hold it up with.
Yeah. Always use one of these.
The ties. The ties around there.
Because if you don't, it falls apart.
The whole thing collapses.
And. Or lala.
Yeah, mess. All right.
The one thing I've also noticed
is that you've been kind enough
not just to bring these peonies
but ants into my studio as well.
Thank you that.
But I do understand that peonies
are are notorious for
having ants on them, right.
For years and years people believed
that it and had to go to the bud.
Or the bud wouldn't open was the biggest myth
is it ever wasn't the photo myth
even that when I was a kid I worked
as a gardener at this church and
the gardener eyes told me at Jose,
ants got to go to the penis, you know.
But what the ants do is they get a
there's something sweet on there.
So they're hanging around that there.
You bring these in,
put them in the middle of that dinner table,
and all of a sudden people have ants
crawling across their plate board.
I used to get yelled at for that.
You gotta wash them off or get those hands,
wash them, even if you buy
them in the grocery store.
I don't. It could be. Could be.
Alright, just wash 'em up for safety
so that you don't get in trouble
for bringing ants to your dinner.
That's big. And most importantly,
don't take a baseball bat to a P&E, bud.
And that's what we learned
here today from Cisco.
They fly so good, no?