Peonies diseases and pests

Pressure through the year

The number of problems listed as active in each month. Pick a month to see what to sow, plant and harvest then.

Start from what you can see

• White or grey coating on leaves
• Fruit rotting or spoiling
• Leaves turning yellow

What actually prevents them

• Water at the base of the plant in the morning, never over the leaves. Splashing soil onto foliage is the delivery route for every problem listed here, and morning watering lets anything that does land dry before nightfall.

  Applies to: Gray Mold (Botrytis)

• Mulch the soil surface. A physical barrier between last season's spores and this season's lowest leaves removes the first infection of the year, which is the one that seeds all the others.

  Applies to: Gray Mold (Botrytis)

• Give the plants their full spacing 90×100 cm and keep the centre of each one open. Air moving through the planting dries the leaves faster, and leaf wetness duration is what turns a spore landing into an infection.

  Applies to: Powdery Mildew

• Rotate this bed and everything else in the same family on at least a three-year cycle. 2 of the problems below survive in soil or crop debris between seasons, so returning the same crop to the same ground hands them the host they were waiting for.

  Applies to: Gray Mold (Botrytis), Powdery Mildew

• Clear and remove the spent crop at the end of the season rather than digging it in. Debris left on the surface is where the persistent problems overwinter, and next spring they start from your own bed rather than from somewhere else.

  Applies to: Gray Mold (Botrytis), Powdery Mildew

• Keep affected material out of the compost heap — 1 of these survive a garden heap and come back with the finished compost. Bag it for municipal green waste, which is composted at temperatures a garden heap does not reach.

  Applies to: Gray Mold (Botrytis)

Every listed problem

Ordered by how much they can cost you.