Background: Our crazy late snows/frost then hail have played havoc with my early peonies for (HOPEFULLY) the last time! This year's 10 inches of snow on Mother's Day and several below freezing nights and rainy days severely damaged several of my earlier rising peonies. Not all of them are early bloomers but several varieties had significant growth and some buds killed by Mother Nature this year, probably worse than in any previous year. So this fall/winter next spring I'm doing something about it!
I've mentioned this idea in other threads but I'm committed completely now--just put in an order for garden fleece through Amazon--
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0071B1C2Q/
I've also purchased several tomato cages to cut down to make a base for the fleece to rest on. I also plan to cover the tops of the tomato cages with hardware cloth--probably the cheaper green plastic version with the same small openings since I think it'll be easier to work with. I plan to put the hardware cloth on the tops of the cages when they're installed this fall and have all of the garden fleece cut to size; that way I can just throw it over the cages and secure it with landscape pins (or rocks if the ground is frozen) as needed. I thought about just using heavy plastic but the purpose of this exercise isn't to keep all moisture out but to keep tender growth just a bit warmer and to keep the heavy snow from crushing the new growth.
I already do some frost damage mitigation on a few peonies. The way I've done it so far is to place large, heavy pots near each peony to be used as covers as needed. This is very effective and I'll continue to do it for the few peonies that are most frost sensitive but it sure is a pain to move those heavy pots around in the cold. I normally end up covering/uncovering at least 5 times each spring. I'm thinking with the tomato cages/garden fleece I can just put the fleece in place when the 1st late spring peony killing weather is expected and maybe even leave it there until the danger is past; I'll have to play that part by ear based on expected weather. Once frost damage weather is over I'll leave the hardware cloth in place until the peonies are almost tall enough to hit it, hopefully providing some hail protection.
So what am I not taking into consideration? Does anyone see any major flaws in my half-baked plan? I'll do some version of it anyway--I've already purchased most of the materials needed to put it in place. If anyone out there has anything that might improve my chances of success please yell out.
I'm not sure which peonies I'll be using for this experiment, can't remember all of the names of those most damaged. I know Pink Hawaiian Coral and Flame were 2, though. I'll make a list over the next couple of days and post in case any of you are interested in following my experiment. I hope you are--it'll get lonely posting here without feedback....
I think I'll take pics of the pathetic growth of those peonies destined to be the test subjects of this experiment and post them later today. You'll see from those that I really have nothing to lose by this trial and maybe have some pretty peony blooms to gain if I succeed!
