Why you should snip off your first year flower buds

So you bought a new peony. And even better it grew and formed a bud! It’s so exciting to see the first flowers on your new peony. But if you can possibly stand it, it can be a good idea to snip off that bud before it blooms.

Why would I suggest such a horrible thing?

First, peonies don’t love being moved around. It’s a lot of stress on the plant.

While they are getting settled into their new home, it’s best for them to focus on root development. It takes a lot of energy to produce a flower and that energy is coming from the roots that were already stressed from moving.

Removing the flower bud on a newly planted peony allows the plant to conserve that energy and devote it to forming healthy roots. Healthy roots are a healthy plant.

In the long run, your peony will grow faster and give you more flowers sooner if you give it the first year with no blooms.

But it is a hard thing to do. If there is more than one flower bud on your peony plant you may want to leave just one to open and remove the rest.

Or at the very least, if you do choose to let your peony bloom in its first year, be sure to snip the remains of the bud off after it’s done blooming so the plant doesn’t have to use even more energy making seeds.

Many peony plants don’t even produce a flower bud in the season, or even the first couple seasons. That’s just the plant building up energy reserves in the root system until the plant can support the big and beautiful flowers.