Geraniums are one of the easiest flowers to grow and maintain. They are a favorite among home gardeners and are great as container plants for indoor living. Geraniums are wonderful mixed in with the other flowers in your garden, as hedges to your garden, or placed in pots around the outside of your house.
How To Care For Geraniums
If planting outside, purchase your plants at your local garden center and keep indoors until the last of the year’s frost has come and gone. Once Spring has arrived, pick a spot where your plant will receive ample sunlight. Although geraniums can grow well in shaded areas, they will bloom better if exposed to full sunlight every day, meaning, 6-8 hours.
Plant your geraniums in porous soil that will have good water drainage. Too much water can cause root rot. In addition, plant your flowers no deeper than the depth of the soil your plant was potted in. In fact, you could actually plant a bit shallower. It is also recommended that compost or peat moss be added to the soil before planting. This will help in keeping the soil loose and light.
When watering your geraniums, try to water them under their leaves. If this is just too difficult, or too time consuming, you can water them early in the morning so that the sun’s rays will dry the leaves out throughout the day. During the Spring and Summer months, water once a week, possibly more, depending out how hot your summer days get. It’s important to make sure the soil has the opportunity to dry completely before watering again. Adding a thin layer of mulch over your garden as ground cover will help keep some moisture in the soil and will also keep the surface temperature of your soil down.
Geraniums really like their plant food! Feed them every 2-3 weeks with a 20-20-20 liquid fertilizer. Also, be sure to “deadhead” them, removing dead leaves and flower buds as they turn brown. Doing this will enable the living part of your plant get all the more nutrients, rather than the plant “wasting” the nutrients on the “injured” part.
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Scented Geraniums are wonderful indoor plants because of their…well…scent! Although their flowers don’t grow as big, the scents they produce make up for it! With scents such as apple, citrus, and chocolate mint, you’ll find these plants stimulating to the senses.
Zonal geraniums are probably the most common geranium. Their flowers grow very large and are available in a variety of colors, mostly in the red and pink tones. They are called “zonal” because their leaves have a light green and darker green pattern to them.
Ivy Geraniums are excellent for hanging baskets and do not need quite as much sunlight. They are also available in many different shades of red and pink and even in purple. They are called ivy geraniums because their leaves are ivy-like and their stems are long and trailing.
Geraniums are a great addition to any garden or home. They can thrive in almost any climate, as long as they have ample sun, plenty of water, lose, well filtered soil, and plenty of fertilizer. Until next time, take care and happy gardening!