A friend from church recalled portions of this column I wrote over eight years ago.
I originally wrote the column about how to overwinter Zonal Geraniums or Pelargonium x hortorum. When I was in the greenhouse business with my family, we had unusual clients.
One client we had while we were renting plants was an upscale person. Our plant-sitting service cared for her plants when her family was in Florida during the winter. Our services were not expensive, and we allowed our client to grow an identical geranium each year.
We worked with our client to provide a geranium that matched the colors of her apartment with the same geranium species from the cutting we would take.
Overwintering geraniums in a safe manner was one of the services that we provided. We also allowed each client to keep plants according to the design of their rooms from year to year.
On Oct. 26, 2023, I talked with Steve Huber on his radio Program on WZLP about overwintering geraniums and many other plants. As I drove down Broad Street in Ashland last year, I saw several giant, beautiful geraniums hanging on a porch.
The radio host, Steve Huber, and I discussed how large this geranium was. I stopped, and I found out later, after a quick interview, that this plant did not come from a greenhouse that year.
This monster geranium was 5 years old. A dad I now admire cared for this lady’s geranium tenderly.
This lady revealed that these geraniums were cared for by her mother four years ago, and her dad kept the plants as a memorial. Memorials are essential, and a living monument that needs care will take effort on our part.
My financially conservative grandmother taught my mother how to overwinter in an old-fashioned way. Remember that geraniums do not have to complete their life cycle in one year but are tender or cold-sensitive perennials.
There are two standard methods for overwintering geraniums. Grandmother’s method was to dig up the old geraniums, avoiding digging up any roots.
Grandmother dug all around the geraniums, making a large hole so no harm came to the roots. While gently removing the geranium from the hole, she would shake off as much of the soil as possible.
One of the problems is that diseases could still reside in the clods of soil, so it is essential to get the heavy clods off, breaking the soil left on the roots as gently as possible.
Some clods of clay may not come off quickly without soaking the geranium in a bucket of water first. A paintbrush can help remove some of the soil if it is dry enough.
If you can get the soil off dryly, then fill a bucket with water and place the roots of your geranium that haven’t broken in the bucket for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Grandma used organic binder twine to tie the geraniums.
She made a loop with the twine, not making a tight knot. Then, she hung the plants upside down in the breezeway between the garage and her greenhouse in the dark.
This breezeway provided a cool, dry area for the geraniums to survive. Once a month, Grandma would take down the plants and put them back in the bucket to soak up more water.
In time, the leaves would come off. These plants would remain dormant until spring, and she would plant them in the ground, which would be fine.
Each geranium was larger the following year, and she had a high survival percentage each year. Imagine doubling the size of your geranium each year. Grandma was terrific.
Our contract with our client in Wooster for overwintering geraniums was different.
First, she would find a plastic pot that could handle the geranium’s root ball and allow the geranium not to be too crowded inside the pot. Mother used standard potting soil.
She placed the root ball in the pot over a few inches of soil around the plant and filled the rest to the edges, leaving a space below the edges to allow watering.
Once the geranium was rooted, she cut about 1/3 of the stems off the plant. These pots wintered in the greenhouses. Again, like my grandmother, my mother would thoroughly water the geraniums once a month.
We had a bright spot in the greenhouse for the geraniums to make it through the winter after the frost threat, transplanting the geranium back into the yard. It would help if you trimmed the straggly or leggy stems two weeks after the geranium takes off.
An insect called Whitefly occasionally infested my mother’s greenhouse and had to be dealt with in the greenhouse geraniums. In a future column, I will address this insect.
These are two methods of overwintering geraniums with which I am familiar and have experienced success.
I have enjoyed bigger, brilliant blooms, and you will enjoy the same next summer if you try to overwinter your favorite geraniums.
I hope you all have had a pleasant stroll through your gardens this week. If you have any problems, email me at ericlarson546@yahoo.com, and I will do my best to answer your questions.
I will also leave a blog link on my website for you to find and leave comments at www.ohiohealthyfoodscooperative.org.