A Stroll Through the Garden: Ways to overwinter your geraniums

A few years ago, a wonderful lady from church asked me if you can keep geraniums over the winter. When I was in the greenhouse business with my family, we had very unusual clients. One client we had while we were renting plants was an upscale person. We took care of her plants when her family was in Florida during the winter and would provide a plant-sitting service. Our services were not terribly expensive, and we also provided our client a chance to grow a geranium that was identical each year. We worked together with our client to provide a geranium that matched the colors of her apartment with the same geranium species. Overwintering geraniums in a safe manner was one of the services that we provided.

Last week, as I was driving down Broad Street in Ashland, I saw this huge, beautiful geranium. I stopped and started taking pictures of this beautiful plant. A young lady came out and looked at me in kind of a strange way, as if she wondered what I was doing. Then I explained how I appreciated the beauty of her geranium. She explained that she and her dad have been caring for her mom’s geranium for five years — kind of like a memorial to her. She had been overwintering this geranium, which is why it is so large. I thanked her for the pictures.

My grandmother — because she was kind of conservative with her money — taught my mother how to overwinter an old-fashioned way. Let’s keep in mind that geraniums are not annuals that complete their life cycle in one year. Zonal geraniums are tender or cold-sensitive perennials.

Two methods to overwinter geraniums

There are two common methods for overwintering geraniums. Grandmother’s method was that she would dig all around the old geraniums to avoid harming the roots. This was the first step. 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 not removed. Breaking off the soil left on the roots as gently as possible was important. A paint brush can be used to help remove some it.

Next — fill a bucket with water and place your geranium’s roots that haven’t been broken in the bucket for 45 minutes to 1 hour. Grandma used sisal to tie up the geraniums and would make a loop with the sisal and hang the plants upside down in the breezeway between the garage and the house, or sometimes in the greenhouse, while in a bag tied to the geranium. These geraniums must be stored in a cool, dry place for them to survive, like a heated garage. Once a month grandma would take down the plants and put them back in the bucket to soak up some more water. If the room was dry, she would spray the roots from time to time. The leaves would come off as they would dry out. These plants would remain in this dormancy until spring, and she would plant them in the ground and they would be just fine.

My mother would do this overwintering differently for our client in Wooster. The first thing she would do would be to 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 a standard potting soil, placing a few inches around the plant in the pot and then filling in the rest of the pot to the edges. Once she had the pot established, she cut about one-third of the stems off the plant. My mother, just like my grandmother, would water the geraniums about once a month thoroughly. We had a bright spot in the greenhouse for the geraniums to make it through the winter. After you have transplanted the geranium back out in the yard for about 2 weeks and the geranium has taken off, you really should trim out the straggly or leggy stems.

Between the two methods, I remember an insect called whitefly on occasion having to be dealt with in the greenhouse. Grandmother’s method for preserving geraniums seemed to be less of a problem, which initially for me seemed to be a greater problem. As the season is coming to an end, we need to be thinking about saving our geraniums in this way.

Hope you all have had a nice stroll through your gardens this week. If you have any problems, e-mail me at [email protected] and I shall do the best I can to answer your questions. You can find links to this column at ohiohealthyfoodcooperative.org. Thank you for participating in our column.

Eric Larson of Jeromesville is a veteran landscaper and gardening enthusiast and a founding board member of the Ohio Chapter of Association of Professional Landscape Designers.

This article originally appeared on Mansfield News Journal: Two methods for overwintering your geraniums