- must be moved indoors before frost.
- Before wintering, plants should be properly prepared.
- There are different ways of wintering geraniums, depending on the conditions.
- At the right moment, you should start waking up the plants.
Proper wintering of geraniums begins with choosing the right moment and removing the pots from the balcony or garden. We should start storing geraniums in a warmer place in winter before the first frost. Plants do not tolerate temperatures below zero degrees Celsius, so it is worth acting in advance.
When to hide geraniums?
Usually the best time is the turn of October and November. If the flowers grow in pots, just move them to another room. Geraniums that grow in flowerbeds need to be dug out and placed in a pot filled with drainage, and then covered with fresh soil. It is important to do it carefully and not to damage the shoots and roots. It is best to dig up the flowers with a large lump of earth and place them in a pot in this form. Regardless of whether geraniums bloomed in pots or directly in the soil, before wintering, you need to cut the shoots by about 15 cm and remove dried leaves and flowers. The selection of flowers is also important. Choose only healthy, lush specimens for wintering. It is better to remove diseased, pest-infested or too weakened plants.
Ways to winter geraniums at home
- Wintering in a bright room (e.g. veranda, windowsill), where the temperature is from 10 to 15 degrees C. It is important that there is a lot of natural light in the room. Water the plants moderately when the soil dries out slightly. The advantage of such wintering is that geraniums retain their leaves and can grow gently.
- Wintering in a cool and dark place (e.g. basement, garage, attic). In this case, the temperature should be 5-10 degrees C. The plants do not need to have access to light, we water them very sparingly, once every 3-4 weeks. Thanks to this wintering, the plants go into dormancy and do not require intensive care
- Wintering in the form of seedlings. Take healthy shoots before frost and place them in water or light soil. Store in a bright place at room temperature. In spring, transplant into pots, it is a good way to rejuvenate the plants.
- Wintering in a cardboard box or paper bag is a method for experienced gardeners, mainly used for large numbers of plants. Place geraniums without soil, with trimmed roots, in a cardboard box or paper bags, then place them in a cool, dark place. We check the plants protected in this way every few weeks; if they are dry, they need to be lightly sprayed with water. It is worth adding, however, that this is a risky method and inadvertently the geraniums may wither, so there is no chance that they will recover in spring.
Waking up geraniums
In mid-January we start to wake up the plants from their winter sleep. If we want them to bloom beautifully in spring, we should move the flowers to a warmer room or increase the temperature in the place where they are located. The best temperature is about 15 degrees C. At the same time, we can also increase the frequency of watering. In March, it is worth fertilizing geraniums and cutting off the ends of the shoots. Thanks to this, the plant will branch out and bloom profusely. In May, we can transplant the flowers into larger pots and take them outside.
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